To be in a quiet bus
late in the evening,
With it dark outside
and glaring lights on the inside
upon the insipid and expressionless

faces of the people,

Is not a pretty feeling.

No, not dreary, not weary,
Not even tragic or thoughtful...
Just pure flat expressions,
As if surrendering to the doldrums
of life,

As like to the dulled whirling of the engine.

This is, in itself,
perhaps the journey of life.
Not walking, neither running,

But being led on-

Driven-
While thinking that you're determining the
Journey
While riding on the silent

Efficient twirling of the 

air-conditioned machine,

Riding with assured expectancy

When really-
There is none.

Can life ever be so insiduous.  

The scene aboard the bus starkly reminds me of the empty fluorescence of 'The Night Cafe' by van Gogh and 'Automat' by Edward Hopper.

I guess my mood really affected what I saw. It was a long day-much of a failure I had thought, despite my working my best for it. I saw it as the situation being thrown by uncontrollable circumstances, or it could be unwise decision of the individual. I was fatigued and alone, and much stood in my way of seeking what I want-or heck-do I even know what I really want, or what is good for me?

I boarded the bus from school to meet Art and as I was sitting there, defeat shown all over my face, I saw this: darkness encased the driver and the front of the bus, and impotent brightness was strewn over the faces and figures of the few passengers seated at the back facing the front and one another. There was this still silence amidst the sound of the engine and the buzzer. We were the stragglers of the crowded majority who had gotten on earlier for home. I was suddenly inspired by a mixture of my Eye, the lights and the sounds, and I scratched this unrefined but stark poem on my notepad in a couple of minutes, all the while trying to engage my aural senses.

I feel that just like how we take rides on the bus-crowded and rushed travelling being so common in the Singapore city state-we are being taken on a ride by the insiduous momentum of life. We think we know where we are going, but if we pause to think: could we have done anything different, or better? Why did we, at certain junctures, choose certain paths which we sometimes wish that we hadn't, but which we justify as practical or pragmatic? Are we really happy with our lives and choices?

Do we really know where we are going, or what drives us? I suspect that we know not what drives us, or if we refuse to see the machinery that drives us.

The Night Cafe by van Gogh (1888) and Automaton by Edward Hopper (1927). Both paintings convey mood more than anything else that the eye can superficially see, and this is translated through the use of strark light in both cases. In the former, the light, people and location convey a sense of ennui, of a stale destination long reached. In the latter, which is an intense scrutiny of modern life, the woman sits in light and darkness, waiting for transition, for her train to come.