Clean, Well-Lit, Sus Bus Station

The bus station bothers and bewitches.

You come into the bus station, with a sense of portent. Some foreboding.

Maybe you come in from the whipping wind of a Nebraska November night, blinded by hurled snow, hardly able to see.

The bus station protects you from the wind– it is calm inside. Climate controlled.

The bus station is a portal– a star gate. A cavern leading to many other caverns– limitless numbers of other caverns.

The bus station is well-lit, which reminds me of this,

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place ~ A Classic American Short Story by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1926,

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.

“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

“Why?”

“He was in despair.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know it was nothing?”

“He has plenty of money.”