The Barge of Lost Souls

To most people, it’s the number 12. To me, it is the Barge of Lost Souls.

This is the blessing or curse of an overactive imagination, being observant.

To be fair, something is always happening on the Barge of Lost Souls:

Someone is having an animated conversation with their invisible friend or adversary.

A man—and it always seems to be a man—is loudly sharing his conquests and defeats.

The diesel engine sound of a bag full of cans being dragged in, the aroma of spoiled beer—

Of dirty clothes.

At night riders nod off and there is the sound of their phone hitting the floor of the bus.

The Capital Hill stop is a hub for transients; you see a houseless person on the bus, you know they will be getting off at the Capital Hill.

And I’m taking it in, covertly typing notes into my phone.

This year it is the Barge of Lost Souls, next year it will be something else.

As much as I am a writer, I am a documentarian—

It has been this way since I was a child.

My nature is not just to document things like a bus ride, it is to remember them even after decades.

The evidence for this is my latest memoir, See The Stars They’re Shining Bright.

Even after forty years memories I thought were lost revealed themselves—

They weren’t gone, just locked away in a safe place.

Waiting for me to spray a little WD-40 on the padlock, hear the door to a forgotten room open with a creak.

Maybe it will be the same with all these notes I take related to the Barge of Lost Souls:

In a few years, I’ll see what I wrote about an argument I witnessed on the bus yesterday and more details will emerge—

The color of a shirt. A backwards ball cap. A facial expression. The sound of a cheap backpack being rummaged in.

Maybe I’m not just riding home at all, maybe I’m traveling through the pages of a book that doesn’t exist yet.

Perhaps every ordinary day is waiting for the right distance to become a story….