The Route: Cocooned vs. Engaged

I loaded my Ipod with fast, mellow, and slow songs that usually influence a happy, peaceful, or sad mood. I listened to artists like Xaphoon Jones, Nightmares on Wax, the XX, MF Doom, and Joanna Newsom Even over the music I heard the loud basses and engines passing next to me on the road. As I passed people, they were usually standing or sitting around waiting for the bus. I would look down or straight head to avoid eye contact and successfully avoided conversation but it felt like I wasn’t paying them much attention to begin with. When the faster paced songs played, I felt the rhythm within me and all I wanted to do was sing and dance along. I paid less attention to details to my surroundings and just enjoyed the music. During these songs I get the chills because they sound so good and nothing else matters but the music and it put me in my own little world, the phrase used so commonly. It made my walk to nowhere more enjoyable and passed the time faster. When the mellow instrumentals played, The beat was still felt but somehow I was less distracted by it, paying more attention to things around me from the cracks on the ground, to the people passing me by in cars as I waited at stop lights. I noticed more of things I enjoy about Tucson from the trees to the paint-peeled or rusted parts of buildings. I noticed restaurants that I wasn’t very aware were there before. The music did seem to enhance my vision as colors seemed to stand out more, especially red. When the slow songs played, my mind wondered to my stresses not having roommates or place to move to my roommates moving out of Tucson to my lack of money to the struggles of my family to the car I just received that now has three flat tires and doesn’t start. It was like I wanted to be sad. There are many life situations that feel like they were meant to bring me down and I wanted to dwell on them, I wanted to feel bad for myself. The music sounded beautiful and a beautiful saddened soundtrack for my stresses that usually didn’t even relate to the song. I was back to not paying much attention to what or who was around me.

On the way back, I took out my headphones. When I passed people I tried to make eye contact but most of them were avoiding eye contact with me. I could tell because they did it in ways that I do to avoid eye contact. When eye contact was met, they either looked away or gave an expression that said hello. On two occasions the person said hello as I looked at them. I usually had that mild expression of a hello on my face as well. At this point however, maybe just because of the heat, I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings. The sounds of the road especially when cars with loud engines or basses would pass would annoy me, causing me to call them an asshole to myself. I felt rushed and I paid more attention to the sweat drops falling down my body. I should have brought water.