trvlgs

When I open my eyes my life is Pittsburgh; I’m surrounded on all sides and the sky is seven-in-the-morning and downcast, a battle of navy blue and gray. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, my dad always said, and it is. It looks like it was planned all at once, with every individual piece in perfect place with the rest. The skyscraper district is bookended with green, suburbanized mountains, rivers, Roberto Clemente, holy shit, bridges, and it’s all part of the same city and it knows it and basks in it. Pittsburgh is a cute girl with nice glasses. Someone should get an award for Pittsburgh.

I would later tell Kate that I wouldn’t mind living there, to which she said, yeah, I know some people there you could talk to. And then my desire deserted me (she knew it would).

If you didn’t know, Pennsylvania is the land of virtue, liberty and independence; those abstracts dominate every atom of its fibers, every park bench and waddling pigeon.

Listen: every Greyhound terminal is entirely different, and most of them are spiritual representations of their geographic location, I like to think. The Pittsburgh station is Brand New Money, looking like what I imagine an airport terminal in Tokyo looks like, covered in polished silver and televisions and A GLASS-CASE DISPLAY TRIBUTE TO THE OLD PITTSBURGH GREYHOUND STATION. I had an hour-long layover there, and at one point I nervously run up to a busdriver, driving the bus away with my bags in tow though I don’t leave for another twenty minutes, and ask him what’s going on. He rolls his eyes in what looks like existential pain and tells me I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU NEED, BUT THIS BUS NEEDS TO BE CLEANED. I realize that most Greyhound employees don’t like their job, and I’m dumb, really dumb.