Universe on the bus: "How it looks" to him vs. how it looks to me.

The other day I was traveling on the #2 bus and two men got on the bus independently after the girls and I. We were all toward the back with the new comers furthest back. The girls and I were the only white people on the bus. This doesn't really matter to me - except for when this inescapable reality incites others to speak against my whiteness as "whitey," which is what the elder of the two new comers did.

He spoke very graphically about how it was "whitey's turn now" - especially if "he messed with [his] Obama." He boasted of the weapons his 13 year old son had and the huge cache his "homeys" had gathered in readiness for... what? And why?

But how could I personally understand where his anger was from much less his reality; the origin of his hatred was far from my origin of understanding our differences. Then he proclaimed his age to be only a few shy of mine, and that his means were old school. But even I have used this term, "old school," for my own aprroach to my tribulations but I have never considered armed aggression. Regardless, here it was. Reality denying me access.

The other of the two men, it must be mentioned, was much younger and dressed in the way that is often presumed to be gangster attire, complete with the cloth that raps the head tightly and drapes over the nape of the neck ("doo-rag"?). It was this young man, however, that tried to convince the older one to calm down, and even in a few instances appeared to be in danger of the older ones wrath. But nothing happened other than an occasssional appology from the older one who claimed justifications like, "I'm just keepin it real brother - but I'll stop," and "I'll bite my tongue," as if it were the body's fault that anger got out.

So, there you have it. I could have made the foolish mistake of assuming - had there been no verbal exchanges at the back of the bus - that the older of the two new comers and I had a generational bond, and that it would have been the younger one who might have posed the racial intimdation. Alas, all of our curved realities are twisted too to the effect that we will never get one unified point out of it all; and thus we will remain incomprehensible to each other.

One might wonder how we will ever come to picture a singular shape for the universe if we can't even figure each other out.