It’s 7:51. I worry if the bus scheduled to come will arrive. I check the timetable and the specific clauses indicated with black triangles, one pointing upwards and the other pointing downwards, read them again and again to make sure that I have gotten the information right. The bus runs specifically to Kwansei Gakuen University, right in front of the senior high school, Shounkan, where I am teaching at. It is complicated during this time because most students are instructed not to come to school unless necessary, and the university has also delayed their opening date. Crowds of students would have streamed in on normal days, under usual circumstances, on their bicycles, on the buses to school. The bus is here. I hop on it, sees that there is no one else on board, proceeds to open my Libby app to get started on Loss Adjustment, written by Linda Collins. Morning bus rides give me the headspace and time to read. I appreciate these journeys, albeit for a short twenty minutes. Several bus stops later, I have reached the main terminal – in Kwansei Gakuen. Still, I am the only one on board with the bus driver. He is wearing a mask. I nod, thank him. He nods. I tap my ICOCA card on the scanner and alight. The campus is unusually quiet. I see only the gardeners tending to the grass patches, mowing the standing herbage. I look up at the clear blue sky. I see the sakura trees taking centre stage in the school compound. I look around. Still, there is no one else. I walk past the two weeping sakura trees on the way to Shounkan, stop to stare, to admire, to appreciate, to revel in their ephemeral beauty while they last. Will they last through another weekend? Will they still be there when I return to check on them? These scenes and thoughts bring comfort to me while I navigate through my current emotional states of being. All these states are temporal. They are fleeting moments in time, in our lives. Knowing that makes me come to terms with this: All that is happening, in this very moment; this, too, will pass.
(Now, do you understand why I spend so much time walking under these sakura trees? Will you, at the very least, try to understand?)
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