2:36 p.m. I've always been drawn to stories about public transportation (though, pressed to think about it, I can only come up technically with two: Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge, and the movie The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3. Oh, and the movie Subway. And Kurosawa's Dodes-ka-den. Okay, a lot of them comes to mind if one really is pressed to think about it. And if you stretch the definition of "public," you can add Black Sunday, Kiarostami's A Taste of Cherry and Ten; and then again, if you stretch the definition of "transportation," you can add everything else -- Proust, Musil's A Man Without Qualities, D�blin's Berliner Alexanderplatz, Kieslowski's "Dekalog," Shakespeare, Cort�zar's "Hopscotch," Godard's "Weekend," Wenders' "Kings of the Road" and "Alice In The Cities,".... everthing else in literature excluding Ibsen and Robert Frost.). Part of the reason behind my attraction is theoretical: public transportation is reductionist socialism. Part of my attraction is sheer romanticism: lock strangers together in a moving location, and Adventure will Ensue. (I think of William Inge's Bus Stop, Robert Benton's A Trip To Bountiful; George Lucas's lovesong to BART, THX-1138). Part of my attraction is absolute fantasy: I've ridden three buses in my entire life; almost every taxi I took was during my sojourn to Buenos Aires. It's my Californian upbringing: I've had a car since I was three months old, and have been driving it to and fro, alone, since then.

I drive past the crowds waiting at bus stops; or within the omnibuses themselves, looking out at the floating world from behind the huge panes of glass beneath a clinical, heavenly flouresence; and I would envy them. I imagine what they must be saying to one another: the smiles, the shynesses. I remember conversations I've struck up years ago, in the underground in Buenos Aires, or on the ferry between Bremerton Island and Seattle, or the train from Valparaiso to Chicago; I wonder, What are those people doing now?

I guess I feel lonely.

ADDENDUM 6:40 PM. My mind is single-tracked, like a monorail. (Monorail! How could I have forgotten the classic Simpsons episode, number... um, #AG458? [I miss Yong suddenly; he would tell me which episode that is, and I wouldn't have to make it up. He's such a geek. {Yes, I could go to the internet and look it up; but I'm lazy.}]) I keep thinking of other movies (mostly) and books (none at all) that deal primarily with public transportation, to wit: Spike Lee's magesterial Get On The Bus; Hitchcock's and Thornton Wilder's Lifeboat; and that classic of Public Transportation Gone Awry, Titanic.

Can you think of any more? Help me; if inclined, send me an email.

the Funny Show

agriculture poem

my life in the ghost of Bush

time-lapsed (part 1)

unreconciled

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Images are taken without permission from the fine and trusting folks at Folk Arts of Poland; please purchase something from them. Background music stolen without permission from Epitonic, Basta Music, and just about everywhere else my unscrupulous hands could grab something. No rights reserved.

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