Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Bus Stop Daydream

I stand unmoving under the light rays of the rising sun. A majestic purple sky shines in the west while the east blooms with a comforting orange glow.

Strangely, I am not annoyed and uncomfortable standing on the edge of the sidewalk on this agonizingly cold morning. It’s that time of the year when it is neither winter nor spring but some weird hazy combination. The snow beneath my feet is wet and slippery, turned gray by the excess of salt covering the roads. The wind is cold but not the kind of cold that cuts through your body and hangs onto your bones. This is usually my least favourite time of the year, the Earth in aesthetic limbo between crisp white winter and colourful blooming spring.

But the sky. The sky leaves me immobile and totally focused on its saturated and rather unnatural beauty. The sky shouldn’t be able to emit such colour and elegance.

I don’t rummage through my bag and pockets looking for my phone and earphones to stave off boredom on the bumpy bus ride, a little game of hide-and-seek I sometimes lose, settling for fiddling and fumbling with stray pieces of string that hang off my warm wool gloves. I don’t even move. I can’t. I almost feel sad that I can’t thank someone for this masterpiece. I want to take a picture but the vibrant colours, the shapes of the clouds in the sky and how the purple and orange meet and create a colour that I can’t even describe are something no camera could ever capture.

Suddenly, I’m lifted off the ground, raised up on the wings of my own sheer concentration, transported towards the heavens. Closer. Closer. I reach up and touch the sky, bring down a sliver so I can look at it forever. I open my mouth and eat the colours, allowing them to fill me, allowing me to become one with this scenic wonder. The wind whips at my cheeks as I rise higher and higher, unbothered by the cold, the air becoming warmer and warmer. I stretch out my hand, hoping to touch the warm glimmering star of the sun as it peeks over the glistening sky. But I don't want to be Icarus. I don’t want to burn.

The loud noise of the bus screeches to a halt in front of me. The old man driving the bus blinks at me with a heavy look of judgement.

I step onto the wet platform and slowly move away from my space of sanctuary.