from the back of the bus :: ghosts

it's rush-hour. the #1 bus (california street) is packed, a sardinecanful of dazed passengers, in transition, from the financial district to home. from work to play. this is a netherworld, of both, as some read printouts from work while others flip pages of a glossy escapist magazines (themselves a word-image netherworld of advertisements and display articles). i dodge & weave my way inbetween and back, shimmying sideways through standing passengers like a salmon swimming upstream, back back back, past the rear exit, towards the one available seat, by the window. it's still empty 'cos to get there you have to go around a guy sitting on the aisle, listening to his ipod, intentionally and tacitly oblivious to the world in front of his nose.

nothing eventful ("never a dull moment," we say: or is it that we expect too much out of boredom?).

then, "midway in our journey," as dante said (now present on the bus, by my invoking his presence, in the present tense) in his immortal song (a comedy, he says), an interesting event occurs. the bus had stopped and a few of us disembarked. but the rear doors don't close. or, rather, they bang shut then slam open again, loudly, shut and open, ca-chunk! ca-chunk! ca-chunk!, over and over, in rapid tempo, a menacing urban punk sound like an insanity factory.

only a few passengers grimace slightly, the loud noise of the doors faintly irritating their rapt cellphone conversation, or their sublime ipod seance. (you only notice the technology when there's a glitch.)

— except, the moonfaced gal in the seat oppposite, facing me. we look at each other, in the crisis, the doors still noisily slamming open & shut with spastic monotony, and i say, in a low-key, droll tone: "ghosts!"

her eyelids crinkle in a smile as she blinks at me and replies,"ghosts — trying to get a free ride!"*

i smile and nod in agreement, at the shock of recognition. "i especially hate it," she adds, "when the back of the bus gets crowded with 'em."

question: in today's world, is theater really dead? rare? endangered? faintly irrelevant? or no less true offstage than on, if not more so?

we intend to explore this question, and the matter of ghosts, in due course.

_________________________
*
for some years now, passengers of public transportation here in san francisco have proven the potential reversibility of equations. if the way in is also the way out, as ludwig wittgenstein compassionately tried explaining to a fly caught in one of his empty winebottles once, as well as to human beings too — then the way out is also the way in, with a difference: free ride.


TAGS:
everyday life, public sphere, technology, urban planning, dante, wittgenstein, ghosts, equations, humor