The post that got me into drama

my bus ride on 10/21/10by Rose Angélica Arellano Ramos on Friday, October 22, 2010 at 9:21pm


outside of Mills I see a gas station, this is where I wait for the bus 57 to take me back to the yellow house. I sat there waiting impatiently (of course). a blunt wrapper, taco bell wrappers, a taco bell size small cup, an old gum package, a small empty bottle of jack daniels, brown leaves. It is officially fall in Oakland, CA.


when I ride the bus I think about race. this one time I rode the bus with a coon. It was a black stereotyped caricature made flesh. he stunk up the entire back seat of the bus. a black baggy t-shirt, baggy pants, dreads, cap and one big fat lip hung over like a seperate being. In his hand, he clutched a swisher sweet filled with pot. Self-medicating himself; he was a man in a coma. I wonder if he knew he embodied and played out the role made for him by the current elite. The entire time his head bobbed up and down as we went over potholes and up hills. His eyez down at the ground; glazed over. Life was hopeless and yes, he was a slave still. And so was I. We shared the same bus once and I never saw him again.

Today on the bus we are sardines. We passed by a middle school; beautiful little black girls with chemically straightened hair, probably not even teenagers yet. They laughed with each other, forgetting the burn on their scalps. And I wondered if they'd ever know that they embodied and played out the roles made for them by the current elite. I thought about good hair and white America. I thought about race as the people filled up the bus and all spilled out onto various streets. We passed the high school and it was the same girls laughing.

Next to me a woman was working towards a career in the jail system. She could see how fucked up the system is.


And then my stop comes and I walked home to the yellow house.