Life is a pop of the cherry.

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It's a typical weekday morning and I'm riding the bus to work like I normally do. Every morning, I see many of the same people. There's the construction worker lady who dines on a champion's breakfast of potato chips while reading romance novels. Sometimes she is so engrossed in her book and chips that she misses her stop. If I'm sitting near her, I'll give her a tap on the shoulder. She bolts off the bus without so much as a word.

Then there's the elderly gentleman who tries to hustle, cane and all, but his hobbling, worn out body won't let him. The bus driver always waits for him. Sometimes the old man sits next to me and tries to talk to me, but I usually have my earphones in, rocking out in my head, so I just smile and focus on my tunes.

A few times a week there is this empty-eyed lady who thinks the bus belongs to her. She likes to take up multiple seats for all her bags that she always has with her. Let me be clear that this isn't a homeless lady - her fussy outfits and pursed lips give away her sense of entitlement. When you ask her to move her shit, she stares straight ahead and pretends she didn't hear you. Pregnant ladies and old people must stand, so that she and her bags can all have a seat to themselves. Bitch.

There's the really obese woman who has practically sat on me on a couple of occasions; the hip-hop emcee wannabe who raps ineptly near the back of the bus; the twin teenaged-boys with giant afros and even bigger duffel bags; and a man I silently refer to as Indian Alan Alda (because he's Indian and he looks like Alan Alda, duh). He continually switches seats on the bus as people get off until he finally gets one of the single seats where you don't have to sit next to anyone. I like to guess how many times he'll move before I reach my stop.

I assume these passengers recognize me, too. I'm the short girl with new hair colours every few weeks and who mouths the lyrics and taps her feet to music they can't hear.

Looking around at my fellow passengers, I see that like any weekday morning, many of them are doing stuff on their smartphones, while others read the metro paper. All of a sudden, a chorus of text tones and ringtones erupts - I can hear the strange symphony even with the music blasting into my ears. Then I feel my own phone vibrate and check the message.

It's from my mother. Apparently there is breaking news: the man in charge of not pressing the button that will end the world is refusing to leave the control room. His wife says he stopped taking his prozac. He's locked himself up inside with the button, and has emailed a note about his intentions - not a suicide note, per se, since he evidently plans to take the rest of us with him.

That's a fairly alarming piece of news. I mean, most of the news that happens on a daily basis is alarming, but not like this. I feel a lump in my throat and I think about how to respond to my mother.

I look around and see that the other passengers are calling and texting loved ones. Some are crying. The end is imminent... or is it?

Suddenly, the driver loses control of the bus and we skid across the road. The bus flips over and continues its slide toward the bridge up ahead, the sound of metal scraping on pavement and the sounds of people screaming and tumbling inside creating a horrific cacophony.

At times like this is usually when one's life "flashes before one's eyes". I'm getting flashes alright, but these are flashes of lives that are unfamiliar to me. Somehow, I've tapped into the "life flashes" of the other passengers on the bus - the flashes belonging to the afro twins, Indian Alan Alda, and spaced out construction lady.

The flashes are completely random, and I can't always tell who they're coming from.  Sometimes the memories are so out of context that I can't make heads or tails of them.

But sometimes it's very clear who is generating the memory flash. And I suddenly get a glimpse into Madame Entitled-to-Three-Seats' life.

It's kind of hard to hate her now. She's been through enough with Johnny. Maybe she can't stand up to him, and the only way she can get her anger out is to take something a little extra every day for herself. What previously seemed selfish and greedy now seems like she's sort of earned it.

A new flash appears in my brain, and it clearly belongs to the hip-hop emcee. Looks like I was wrong... he's not an emcee after all.

Dude kind of thinks of himself as an artist in his "field", it would seem. I suppose there is a loose kind of art to playing other people's music in order to incite a response from your believers... or maybe dude takes himself a bit too seriously?

Flash! Oh, this is fun. No seriously, I can't tell who this is coming from, but the one who lived the moments I'm seeing lived what looks to me like an enjoyable life of world travel. Judging from the flashes, he went to some pretty exotic locales. I'm a bit jealous.

Suddenly it occurs to me that I might actually be stealing these people's memories. If I'm seeing their flashes, does that mean they're not? Are they seeing mine instead? That's a disturbing thought. Then another one comes on.

My guess is that these memory flashes belong to the young man with the rainblow flag sewn on his backpack. Wait...no... is that... Indian Alan Alda I see dancing joyfully with a crowd of his companions in a gay bar? I thought I had you pegged, Indian Alan Alda! How wrong I was.

Who knew dying could be so fun? Maybe this is how it really happens. Maybe you don't actually see your own life flash before your eyes... instead you get flashes of the collective memories of everyone who is dying at the same moment as you.

But the flashes seem to be slowing down now, and it makes me wonder if I'm moving farther away from the realm of the living, or if the dying people in my vicinity have all completed their journeys into the everafter.

I spoke to soon. The flashes begin again, and I assume these belong to the suited, brief-case carrying gentleman who offered me his seat. Of all the memories this man could summon, willfully or not, before he dies, it's about his job. Ugh.

After all of the interesting memory flashes I've experienced, I sincerely hope that the Businessman's despair at his project going pear-shaped is not the last thing I see before I die. 

Thankfully, it's not... but just like dreams, you don't get to decide what happens. This flash makes absolutely no sense to me. Either this person thinks he's some kind of pirate or my brain is shutting down, and I'm losing the capacity to interpret the memories. The hinterland? It's far far far far far far far far away? It's fa fa fa fa fa fa fa ya ya da da da da? Are these the memories of someone who is mentally challenged? Or is this just me getting brain damage?

I fear that my time on this earth is about to end, so I decide to leave my body and take one last look around to assess what's happened before I accept my fate and make my way to the everafter.

From what I can tell, the bus has crashed through the bridge's guardrail and is teetering over the edge. To prevent the bus from falling, the uninjured and those who are still mobile have moved to the back of the bus, forming a human anchor, allowing the bus to balance perilously on the edge of the bridge, but not fall right over.

Obviously, I'm not among the uninjured. I gaze somewhat blankly at my own body laying on what has become the floor - a cracked window.  There are others around me who are in the same predicament - unconscious, broken, bleeding. I shouldn't have come out for a look - now I'm afraid of dying. Fearing that if I stay out of my body for too long I may never return to it, I slip back in and try to move, but to no avail. I'm breathing, but my body doesn't work. Everything starts to go white...

CLEAR!

A surge of electricity shoots through me and I feel an intense pressure in my chest. AGH! There it is again. And I'm back. I open my eyes and see that I'm no longer lying lifeless on a cracked window inside the bus; I'm on a stretcher outside, next to other people on stretchers, amid a crowd of survivors, emergency personnel, and onlookers. I look to my left and see Indian Alan Alda lying on a stretcher next to me. I don't think he made it. And on the stretcher to my right, I see a bearded man who looks like a backpacker - I recognize him from his memory flashes of travels in Africa.

I'm alive. I made it. No death for me today! In the midst of the chaos I suddenly remember the text conversation with my mother. I search my bag for my phone and open it up to the conversation. 

I dial my grandmother's phone number and wait for her to pick up. Ring. Ring. Ring. Then I hear something else... what's that whistling sound coming from the sky?

*****

I took a cue from the Lodger album cover for this story, obviously. 

But I have a feeling that even if the cover had been different, that I would have still gone the "accident" route.

When I started The Bowie Project, I knew there was going to be a lot of weird, wonderful, exciting, fun moments that would make me go like this:

But I also knew that there was always going to be a time when I would be going like this:

That time has arrived -- Lodger has delivered these moments.

Not all of Bowie's albums have been love at first listen. Some have, but in many cases, it has taken 2-3 days of listens before it clicks and the love begins. Lodger took much longer. And a rollercoaster of a time it has been. The first couple of listens gave me the acceptable reaction of "ok... just give it some time". But days 3-5 actually started to fill me with despair... and anger, I have to admit. I was kind of ready to give up on it. 

And then it happened - it clicked. Sort of. To be honest, I don't know if I'll ever really "get" Lodger. The songs seem pretty random and at this point in time it continues to baffle me as a whole. That doesn't mean that I don't like it. Learning to love Lodger may have been a bit like a 12-step process (most notably, the phases of denial, bargaining, and acceptance)  but now that it's in my life, I wouldn't give it back.