Getting back to San Diego was a lengthy process, one that I don't even want to calculate. Planes jumped me from Hong Kong to Vancouver, Vancouver to Los Angeles. Trains took me from north L.A. to Union Station to downtown San Diego. And I boarded a city bus to pop me over to my apartment.I know that I could have asked a number of people to pick me up from the train depot, but come on, once I'd made it that far, why not just finish the public transportation adventure? I didn't have to wait more than a few minutes for the next bus, and something inside me hinted that this was a good way to get myself back into San Diego life.
What followed was a loud and clear affirmation that YES, San Diego is a mission field! Within a few stops of my getting on the bus, several other people filed in. One was a man stooped and distant, clearly challenged by mental handicaps or drugs or both. He gazed off to one side, muttering incoherently. What immediately came to mind was: "I didn't see this anywhere in Asia." As I flipped through my mental records, it surprised me that in fact, no, I had not encountered anything like this man in the past 2 weeks. In that moment, his mental illness, drug abuse, and isolation confronted me, and the tragic dissonance only ramped up when a few stops later, a shouting match began on the bus. The man had walked up to the bus driver and said something, to which the driver replied that he would not drive on until the man sat down. The driver repeated himself several times, to no effect. At that, several others on the bus, possibly fellow street-dwellers with this guy, began screaming at him to take a seat, they had places to go, etc.
I sat in my seat, quietly watchful beside a man whose cane balanced against my backpack. I wondered if riots happen on buses. I wondered where all these homeless pals might be going on the bus. But mostly I thought of how sad and twisted the situation was. Here I was, back in the proud "land of the free," and I had not felt so disgusted in weeks. I've heard people talk about poverty in the U.S. as a "hidden" phenomenon, but it was the bluntness, the obviousness, that hit me in this bus-ride drama. A man, uncared-for, just wandering blindly through the streets and onto city transit? Causing a score of people to run late on their bus route? It's far from subtle.
Eventually another guy put his arm around the muttering man and loudly escorted him back to a seat. He mocked him for "losing his place" and made jokes about what kind of drugs might be messing him up. I sat and shook my head. Vacation over, just like that.