More bus thoughts

Some mysteries are best left unsolved. It's the mystery itself that makes it compelling, the speculation, the wild theories. A case in point is Deep Throat, if for no other reason than that Mark Felt doesn't have the same ring to it. But prior to the revelation, I heard some intriguing guesses, among them that Deep Throat was Bush Sr, which would've been truly astonishing if it had been true. Now, that theory has to die, cut down by fact, and it's a little sad. The old saying in writing, thanks Papa H., is to write what you know, but I've always preferred Richard Hugo, who told his students the opposite. If you know too much, he said, you feel a cumbersome obligation to the truth that weighs on your imagination. The sweet-looking elderly lady at the church bake sale can't have been the secret mistress of a European prince in her youth if you know she'd lived in the same town for 80 years and is the widow of the last minister. Not that there might not be a good story or poem there too, but you get my point.
In the same way, I've recently solved a small mystery and I'm a little sad. My bus stop on ul. Jagiellonska sits on the inside of a curve in the street. Imagine a J, with the straight part being ul. Ostrogorska, the intersecting road, the curve is Jagiellonska, and my stop at the tip of that curve. Surrounding the stop on all sides are 10-14 story apartment buildings, in true, blocky communist style. Now, my bus, the 835, comes down Ostrogorska and makes a right turn onto Jagiellonska. From the stop, Ostrogorska is completely hidden by the curve of the street and the encompassing buildings. One other note: while when actually on the bus or tram, Polish people are well-content to jostle and bump and get uncomfortably close even when not really necessary, at the stop, everybody stands in their own space. People spread themselves out over half a block while waiting, and collapse upon the stop only when the bus arrives. So. The mystery was this. Time after time, standing in my own space, which was close to and a little behind the stop so that I might observe without being observed (I hate having my back exposed) I noticed this perplexing phenomenon: about ten to fifteen seconds before I could see or hear the bus, people at the edges of the waiting area would begin to move to the stop, preparatory to boarding. I didn't think much of it at first, as some people pace at stops, especially in the cold, and it seemed coincidental. But no. It happened again and again. People standing all over the place, who somehow knew well before I did that the bus was about to arrive. How were they doing it?
My first thought was of reflections in the windows of the building opposite, where the curve of the street might be enough to give advance warning. True enough, you could see the bus reflected before it came into direct view, but only a second or two before, by which point it was also audible. These people, who I came to call the Harbingers, moved, as I said, ten to fifteen seconds before. Here I should also note that people tend to stand in the same places at the stop: if you take a certain bus regularly, you recognize the others who do the same, so the Harbingers were almost always the same individuals, in roughly the same positions. This led me to speculate on some sort of special bus pass option, maybe a cell phone alert feature for an extra fee, the bus's proximity sending a signal to make your phone vibrate. But if you could see Polish buses, you'd understand why I dismissed that quickly: they don't even have heat, so a high-tech wireless alert seemed unreasonable.
I went on theorizing and thinking. Some extra signal at the crosswalk close to the stop? Couldn't see any additional lights or correlation to their changes. Unusually acute hearing as a result of secret Communist genetic engineering programs? Some sort of innate flocking sense, similar to the way birds and schools of fish move as one? A bored housebound person waving a flag from an upper story of one of the buildings? Also puzzling was the fact that about five different buses come to this stop, but the Harbingers always knew when it was the 835. Not a twitch for the 150 or S bus, which come at about the same time. I didn't know. I asked friends. Definitely no cell phone alerts, no evidence of genetic alterations, wisely didn't suggest the flocking sense, couldn't see any flags or other warning from the windows. But it occupied me. It was entertaining, a conundrum, a mental chew toy.
And sadly, one day a week or so ago, I went to the stop, which was unusually crowded. My spaces (I had a second, the other being also close, and underneath a tree) were taken, so I stopped to wait much farther away from the stop than normal. I turned around, back the way I had come (I live on the other side of the street, where Ostrogorska meets Jagiellonska) and solved the mystery. For about 8-10 feet of sidewalk space, you can see through all the buildings to a point on Ostrogorska about half a block before the intersection. And I checked later, the other buses come from the opposite direction on Ostrogorska, so if you see a bus from this point, it must be the 835. I had about 5 minutes of elation and pleasure before I realized how sad this was. So very simple and boring was this answer, especially compared to my theories. A quirk of architechture and city planning, nothing more. No psychic senses, no supernatural powers, just people who know where to stand. And the other Harbingers who stood closer to me were just watching the ones who they knew would see the bus first. I was the only one who didn't know about that spot on the sidewalk, merely because you can't see it from where I usually stand, or approaching the stop from the direction I do. And because now I know, I can't indulge in wonderment anymore. It was my adult version of Santa Claus I suppose, and I guess I'll just have to find something new to think about at the bus stop. Maybe why people continue to think camouflage is stylish. Or how, even after sweeping and mopping repeatedly, there's always one small piece of glass from the bottle you broke last month that embeds itself in your foot unexpectedly. Or why my neighbor, even though he knows I don't speak Polish, and knows that this is Poland where services can be unreliable, just has to come over whenever his Internet is out to see if mine is also out. Or why Leonardo DiCaprio is still considered a good actor. Or why . . .