Leaving by bus, in the rain and in the dark, is something special.

The perfect album to put on is Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós, with songs like Starálfur and Olsen Olsen, but especially Sven-G-Englar and Ný Batteri. Sounds are distracting all around with the people talking, the battering of raindrops on the windshield, the thud-thump of the uneven highway road, but they gradually fade to a lethargic pulse. The unrecognizable timbres of each distinguishable instrument take over.

This is the moment. The exact purpose of the song. The notes are pure, amorphous colours in the darkness, a dulcet damper for the outside world.

Soon the rhythm of the passing city lights will become more and more sparse, and all that will be left in the windows are the reflections of those with their overhead lights on, reading books or keeping eye-contact.

It’s been ten months since the last time you did this.

How has so much happened since then?

Three pictures.

Patience is the greatest advantage. Time brings all answers. Knowing that the sun will rise again tomorrow puts the mind at ease.

Sometimes you just need to wait.

Three pictures.

There’s so much to say, but nothing comes out. I think I’m still in shock. When I think that things have passed, this happens. Complete ambivalence has turned to inconclusiveness. All I know is that I’m still a sucker for those two little words. There’s solace in the hope that other things will work out, that they wouldn’t have happened, had things not ended up like this. Now all that’s left is clutter of questions.

Karma makes me ask who I’ve wronged so greatly to deserve this. At the same time, it’s an open-ended answer that doesn’t give me what I’m looking for, or make me feel any better.

And what do I do now, when all I have left are memories that may fade like old photographs sitting in the sun?

On days like this, it’s better to wear light clothing, and throw on a hooded windbreaker. The rain outside is just a drizzle, so it’s comfortably cool. Pay no attention to the hydraulic hiss of the windshield wipers, or you won’t be able to help hearing them through the quiet parts of every song. Window seats are prime. There are fewer distractions from people walking down the aisle.

The 95 goes from one end of the city to the other, straight through the heart of Ottawa. Every stop is a memory. Old haunts. Past lives.

Here was your first apartment. Sometimes you’d find Christie waiting for you here on the benches between classes. How long ago those days seem, how immature and relatively innocent. The next two stops are on the edge of the university campus, four years of scattered truancy. Two stops later is where you use to buy a medium caramel corretto every morning after an exhausting night with Louise. Your old government office is another two on. The concrete building looks so foreign now, and you wonder if the same people are still inside. Another few stops is your last apartment, before buying the house, the end of bus rides home every day.

Music never meant so much.

You pass by construction sites, finished buildings, see the evolution of the city.

Six years of experience, six years of shifting, ever-changing anima.

Six years passed.

Six years lived.

Six years grown.