Patrick White: 'Look into a passing bus, and more often than not you will see something you would rather not'.
I read this sentence on the bus this morning. I can't recall what happened immediately afterwards, probably nothing poetic or noteworthy, but it would have been cute, kind of symmetrical or something, if at the full stop I had lifted my eyes from the page to see an open-mouthed woman glaring at me from the passing pavement. It would have been even cuter if, shamed by our contact, she had then stooped sharply to gather her chaotic and billowy shopping bags and shuffled off into a throng of school kids.
7 comments:
it's funny, often i look up at passing buses (and cars, trucks, and so on) and find myself sharing a mutual blank stare - the noteworthy thing being that this moments always seem longer from the sidewalk than when you're the one in the vehicle.
it's like there is some kind of dopplering effect (like when a beat changes time when a car passes you playing loud music) - you can kind of measure it if you think about the time spent traversing a familiar space (like the corner at the end of your street, say) and then compare the sensation from a car and from the sidewalk. its always longer on the street.
or maybe it depends on whether you feel as though you are being looked at rather than that sharing a mutal glance...
... or whether you're longing for something. I remember when I was living in Brisbane and wanted to go home I would stand and watch long-haul trucks pass me by, quietly imagining where they might be destined. Occasionally I would spot the driver, perched up there in his dim-lit cabin, his eyes (I romanced) pointed straight down the guts, all the way South to where I come from. Time at these times was 'always longer on the street'.
So that the thread isn't completely lost: interstate buses sometimes had the same effect, though far less often.
the truckdriver always has the bonus of superiority, as does the busdriver. the power to merge despite the emphaticness of your route, the power to run you off the road, to exclude you from the bus.
i always feel a great sense of inferiority gazing their direction.
the bus-goer, unless they've caught me out doing something i would rather not be seen, i look down on from below. i have the freedom, they are at the whim of their driver.
unless he decides to merge in front of me.
oh, to be a bus driver...
So in this new imperialism, truck/bus drivers are the shadowy agents of Dystopia, and we, the revolutionaries on the street (or in the seat)? But then how do you account for the fluroescent vests and shiny-bottomed office pants?
i mean, perhaps, only to say, that there are always hierarches, power plays. and that these men (and women) with their mighty machines, are in this odd position, in that they are in a position of servitude, yet they hold such immense power.
are they aware of their power, do they wield it knowingly, or do they unawares lord their status as minor deities over and above us all?
how are we to respond?
knowing we sit at their mercy, whilst on the bus, we know that, off, we are free from their reign of terror. yet without them we remain only a step... from what? what do we owe these practitioners of perturbation? why do we continue to submit?
I often look in them, and around them when I'm also a passenger. I find the different approaches to dealing with the experience quite interesting: from glazed over boredom to animated phone conversations. But mostly I am saddened by the practiced avoidance with any other human in the same space. It is an isolating and sad thing.
Yes, jt, 'practiced avoidance' is sad. But is it something forced on us by the city, like a survival routine? All those people with all those stories ... which ones can I take home with me?
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