cimorene

I go to school about ½ an hour away in Pargas, a small town. The countryside between here & there is lovely. By car, with family or friends, it's a beautiful drive and really enjoyable. I am fond of individual houses, hills, dilapidated barns, and stands of beeches all along the route. But at 4 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, on the way to class, the bus is so crowded that there's rarely a single empty seat by the time we leave the city limits.

I hate sitting next to a stranger on the bus. I don't cringe away from casual contact; it doesn't scare me exactly, or make me hyperventilate; it just makes me nervous, tense, and extremely unhappy. Usually I focus on the scenery and my iPod, and Finns are a silent people whose social norms strongly discourage interactions with strangers, which means they tend to be my best-case seat mates - they sit down silently, move little, and focus on their phones, books, or headphones. But last night I had the misfortune to be hemmed in by a middle-aged woman with a giant Marimekko status bag who, even though she didn't require any more space than I did, shoved her elbows out like she thought it was time to do the chicken dance, right into my arm, and sat that way the entire ride. I'm not the sort of person who elbows back, and I was too angry to shrink away from her (plus then she'd just have stolen more of my seat), but I couldn't relax because of the force of her elbow pressing against my arm. I had to tense my arm just to hold it where it was, so I spent the 45-minute ride with my arms and shoulders stiff and rigid, eyes closed, fantasizing about different objects I could have used to shove her away, hopefully hitting the funny bone on the way.

Weirdly enough, despite its stressful elements, the bus ride is one of the best times for fic brainstorming. Sitting motionless with one's eyes closed and an iPod with the volume cranked up is very encouraging to the imagination. (I have second-most luck with walking the dog at night - also a solitary activity, but then my eyes are open and I have the dog and the fear of my face freezing off to distract me.) Possibly I could mimic the conditions by curling up with my iPod in the sauna, but I'd feel kind of silly.