18 Jun 2026

Heart of light

A day in the life of Zito Madu

Illustration: Joe MacLeod

Today: Zito Madu, journalist and author of The Minotaur at Calle Lanza.

Issue No. 589

A Trying Day
Zito Madu

A Trying Day

by Zito Madu

The day started with me missing my 6 a.m. flight because my iPhone alarm didn’t go off for some reason. According to reddit, this is a fairly common problem.
Changed to a new flight at 1 p.m., at triple the price of the original flight.
Forgot to pack my Marni trousers. That may not sound important, but it mattered to me. I was headed to Detroit to be part of my nephews’ baptism, and I wanted such a special occasion to be marked by the boys knowing that their uncle is a wonderfully dressed man. I wanted one of the first images that they saw after they entered into their new life to be of me in a white shirt, Marni pants, and black loafers, so that they could have a good sense of how an angel would look.
Because I was assigned to the last boarding group for the new flight and the overhead compartments were full, my carry-on suitcase was tagged instead, forcing me to pick it up at the baggage claim when we landed.
As is natural, I had to wait at baggage claim for an extended amount of time for my bag to appear.
The reason I like to carry my bag, rather than checking it in, is so that I can leave the airport as quickly as possible; since I had to wait for the bag, the Uber from the airport to my parents’ house, which usually is about $40, was double that because of, I don’t know, traffic on a Saturday afternoon?
There’s a bus that runs from the Detroit airport to downtown Detroit, which stops quite close to our house and costs only $5. Not wanting to pay $80 for a 25-minute ride, I took the bus instead.
I have a friend who says that sometimes I’m unnecessarily cheap (especially since I spend my money on expensive things elsewhere), and this behavior almost always costs me in the long run.
The bus took forever to go half the distance. The more people it picked up through the journey, the more chaotic the scene inside became.

The Midwest has dark energy, but dark energy that’s different from a place like New York City. In my opinion, the dark energy in NYC is external, whereas in a lot of Midwest places, it is internal. When people in NYC are going through something, it’s expressed externally and everyone else has to become a witness or bystander to their particular event. You get on a train and a guy is sitting bloodied in one of the seats telling a story about the time he worked in fashion, loudly, to no one in particular, and all you can do is be part of the story for however many stops you have. It’s why the most valuable personal characteristic I think a person can have in a city like New York is a great inner solitude. You have to be able to go into your own world and shut out what’s happening around you, because it’s none of your business, and it’s the only way to really protect your sanity. You can’t let the chaos overtake you. But in the Midwest, outside of people having direct problems with each other, that kind of dark energy tends to be internalized. Maybe it’s because of how spread out everything is, or being close to Ohio—it’s worse there—but people there seem to be going through some blinding spiritual disturbance, or they behave like they’re not part of the world around them. When someone’s going through something, it’s as if the whole battle is taking place in the world in their soul, and while their physical body might be next to you on the bus, their consciousness is so far away from Romulus or Dearborn Heights. Most of the time, you can just leave those people alone and go about your day and they won’t bother you. The problem is that when you pack a bunch of those people in one bus headed to downtown Detroit, then it’s like being on Charon’s boat on the River Styx.