The bus ride to and from work is so undemanding, so easy, that you readily let yourself slip into the trap of contemplation without any feeling of guilt or foreboding. You are going to work, or maybe home, and you feel that you have every right to be on the bus and to be watching through the window. You are not to be blamed for this or that. Nothing is expected from you but to pay the fare. You are in transit—between places and obligations. As long as you are on the bus you are exempt from your own life as well. For some reason unknown to you it is acceptable to simply watch all the monstrosities on the way: a mousy old man in pink, a pregnant and/or fat schoolgirl, a hungry sailor, an alien without hope, a fleeting woman with legs and more… Without lifting a finger you remain virtuous on the bus. Yes, you are in transit, indeed. But once you get off the bus, as you no doubt must, everything you have seen along the way catches up with you and wrestles you to the ground: the right to contemplation is reserved for the riders only. And while the tilted bus, which leaves you mercilessly at the corner of your street, roars away laboriously, the faces of your fellow riders observe you dispassionately, and you slide obliquely from their field of vision into the cloud of exhaust fumes—forever. A middle-aged man with sad eyes, short hair, long fingers… A vanishing subject.