Erotics of the Open Road
Field Notes, Book 1
It’s always dark outside or we wouldn’t need the sun. Monk
Le monde ne me comprend pas. Et moi, je ne comprends pas le monde. C’est pourquoi je me suis retiré. Cezanne
Coffee plays a significant role in what follows. Whether reading in transport or with your feet up, consider buying the author a round here. This essay is much revised since its first appearance a few days ago.
I fall off the bus in the pitch dark. Where am I ? The never-ending night. Combustion-engine animal grinds to a stop in what could be Anywhere, driver leans towards the rearview to see if anyone‘s queuing to get on, throws open the doors. The flashing light overhead does his work for him, he doesn’t have to say a word. Next stop Budapest, Zagreb, Warsaw ? Three of us get off. The other two are in a hurry to get home and from a packed bus, I’m suddenly alone on terra not so firma.
Freezing. No gloves: something else I forgot. Winter was over; so I thought. I take stock of where I’m standing on the dark side of the planet. It’s good to be up at this hour when time stops. You can consult your phone, calculate how much longer to go. OK… But why bother… The bitterly cold night has a certain tenderness to it, all that manic energy is taking a break, people aren’t rushing around, it’s a relief. Is this a fiction ? Of course.
Anything that could give you the reader a sense of where I am ? I can’t see any as I breath in migrating fumes of essence and waste, the rasp of human excrement, on one side parking lots for city buses, on the other anonymous smallscrapers pressing skyward, glass nails with little to reflect at this hour. The thin trail of a public service announcement twisting in the wind tells me next to nothing.
Just around the corner is another city. It cannot be far from this desolation...a brightly lit Terminus, village within a city where humans go to shelter during the long night. I know that but I linger. A large, cruciform oasis of human shelter it takes courage to enter...
Is there coffee somewhere at this hour ? The diminuitive, hustling black guy is at his post, pacing the boards on the other side of the counter, slipping between heavyset ladies while filling orders for strudel, poppyseed, latte, expresso. ‘This is not Europe,’ he taunts the crowd in a teasing way, which shrugs back. They want coffee. He at least is overflowing with what used to be called attitude. It’s his private war, waged on a daily basis. Where are we then if this is no longer the Continent ? He’s claiming this as his African island in the middle of Austria, from where he probably sends a healthy remit home each month. It’s hard to get people to wake up.
The station is a floating zoo of sleepy wanderers, some crushed into concave seats, others pacing restlessly. Human binaries again: those who can sleep publicly and those who pace, the people going somewhere and those going nowhere. Some exist in netherlands between, glued to their phones.
Later now, and the sky is lightning, I’ve had more coffee but it’s still too early for the great parks to open only a few blocks away. Can I leave the ayslum, this strange combination prison yard and psyche-ward, hemmed in by the cold, full of talkative types who keep up the chatter over the phone to faraway idols ?
Outside, I approach the thoroughfare where four directions cross. Not sure I want to risk it. What are the rules here, how does laisse faire intersect with modern Me-First ? It’s this moment when one realizes, I’ve read a lot, I have my list, but I don’t know anything about the place where I am.
And there she is, an anonymous representative of her city. Passing by quickly without even a hurried glance, a kind of European Everywoman, identified by shoulder bag, jeans, slumped shoulders as she obsesses over her phone. This crossroad is nothing to her: she heads straight for the Zeitgeist. What if I follow her to ask a few questions ? Will I get a slap or a dirty look ? In another culture, Italy or Croazia let’s say, asking, You didn’t find that intersection terrifying ? or Let’s have coffee, gets a fair reward. Here? Why travel if not to encounter?
She was opaque, unreachable, didn’t give a clue about how she lived. I waited for her to slow down to look in a window, go in a bakery, anything, but no, nothing before she turned into the glass-front office building full of start-ups, Bow and Bow-Wow and all their brethren. She remains an enigma, an unknown.
It’s a little after seven-thirty when the first detachment of the Comic Kamikaze barges in. Dramatic change in ambiance among the sleepyheads, the army marches a straight line from one determined entry-exit to another — they might as well be wearing uniforms. They’ve got blinders on and are going, going, going somewhere. Do not disturb ! Like a comedy militia out of Alice in Wonderland, these are the lucky souls who have JOBS. Don’t distract them, they’re on the clock even before the clock strikes nine. No, or I can’t help you are their preferred responses. Do they hate their lives ? The monied travellers and those of us on the margins, who live by our wits, share a moment of solidarity, staring at these earnest soldiers crossing the floor in successive waves and quietly jeering. Go, Daddy, go. Go, Mommy, conquer the world. For what ? The bus station is a movie set.
Maya Sun is a relief. She’s happy to talk, happy to be photographed, too, with style befitting a famous astologer and palm reader. She met her boyfriend in the Museum of Modert Art in Beijing. What’s that like, I wonder outloud. I mean what do they show in the People’s Republic ? Visit my Instagram page, she replies. She’s on tour now, visiting the capitals, for all intents and purposes theatre folk. Is there a story there ? Why Europe ? Good Money ? Secret Chinese divination system ? Already read all the palms in China ? Maybe she’s a spy, using her talents to find out things in high places. It wouldn’t be a stretch. Balzac would love her. She laughs off my questions with a slightly imperious air and says, See you in Paris. A real businesswoman, she never asks to see my palm.
(If that’s how Madame Sun dresses for travel, I’d like to see her at a bal. No need to describe the gear worn by the other inhabitants of the insane asylum. What happened ? Why so dull ? We have more money at our disposal than all our ancestors combined.)
Shifting Gears Without Going Anywhere
The person looking for a new place to settle complicates his journey. No matter how many years he gives he’ll never be a native, so what precisely is he looking for ? Yet another decision for the Janus-faced man who is both coming and going.
Fate is the thing waiting in every town I go to. Robbed of the habitual surroundings I pass through in a dream, arguments between self and fate only become more intense. No third parties present to mediate, only these two binaries apart, intimately connected. Where should I live ? I too keep going.
Let’s Have A Smile For The Old Engine Driver
The standard subscription pitch should be here. Not today: it too is road weary. To press or not to press, that is the contemporary rohrsach-identity question. Coffee ? Gallons, in between cigarettes. You can buy the author a round here. Be the first, dear internet freeloader.
Truth is stranger than science fiction. Dark side of the planets, all the binary blindly coded, freezing summer nights. Lumbering mechs of sorts. African soylent lines!