Subway Musings (December 2023)

Forty some odd years ago, I'd been 'reading' at the Metro Reference Library downtown. 'Reading' because sitting facing a wall of glass overlooking the subway tracks that re-entered the city's underground, a tattered copy of The Possessed lying face down in my lap, my was gaze fixed on the coming and going of the trains. It was relaxing to the eyes. I hadn't grown up in a city, and the novelty hadn't yet worn off. I'd yet to live the daily subterranean commute to and from work, day after day, year after year. I'd grown up out in the country and the town of 5,000 or so was two and a half miles away. People drove to work; there was no need for mass transit nor will there ever be in towns like that. Watching the trains—and they seemed to be precisely timed—was mesmerizing.

I'd had to be discreet while 'reading' though because I'd already been cautioned once about sleeping in the library. I hadn't really been sleeping. My eyes had been focused on the subway traffic—the rapid shuttling of people into and out of the city—imagining where all these people were headed and what was at the end of the line waiting for them. A library security guard wandering through the area had tapped me on the shoulder. It startled me and I jerked my head to face her. It must have seemed as though I'd been suddenly awakened. With a stern but otherwise blank face, she recited the rules: "No eating, drinking, talking OR sleeping in the library—no exceptions." A friend told me later that homelessness was vigilantly policed in public spaces and the central library was a known hang-out. He laughed and said that was my 'wake-up call'—this was the big city.

Now he tunes out his morning commute in and his afternoon commute out. Just like everybody else. Some sleep. Most keep their eyes open. Even though they can't tell you what they are looking at. It's reflex. Self-protection in the rush hour crowd massed and meshed tight.

A newspaper headline opposite him gets his attention. A bomb threat on a civilian aircraft.

These used to be a lot more common. Always made the nightly news. There was this guy, Ted Kaczynski, who was sending bombs in the mail. One reportedly came close to blowing a plane out of the sky—a jetliner en route from Chicago to D.C. Went on for more than a decade and a half before they caught him. Turned out the guy was political. Had some radical ideas about how technology was destroying society. He got the Times and Post to print his 'manifesto.' It was a few months later when I first heard about. I managed to get a copy from the Robarts Library microfilm collection of The Washington Post. (This was before the Internet Commons era.) It was an interesting expression of anti-technology views, but it was different from anything I'd read before. He went beyond ideas. He was no radical pacifist. His direct action approach was violent and lethal. The manifesto wasn't easily accessible back then, but it is now, and a quick Google search and it's on my phone. On re-reading the essay, paragraph 231 pretty much destroys it.

Throughout this article we’ve made imprecise statements and statements that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and reservations attached to them; and some of our statements may be flatly false.

Seems awfully like what the intellectual revolutionary in the long-ago-read Dostoevsky novel, The Possessed, admits to his narrator interlocutor at one point.

“My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.”

"And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes."

Where does that come from? College days? Was it Vonnegut? No, it was earlier. Ellison. Harlan Ellison. From 1965. And with a very different meaning. Easy to check. This is it: "And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock ... we are slaves of the schedule."

The story's a quick read. Takes me back to my American Lit class. More of a rant than a satire, but definitely both. Not surprising its appeal to that age group, but even all these years later, it still 'feels' right. For me, it's no longer theoretical. It's just too real ... too visceral. Maybe it's the same for others. Uncomfortable to contemplate too deeply.

The 'system' wins. Like we didn't already know that? It reminds us every day in the business news headlines:

Bond Markets Seek Fiscal Austerity in Government Budgets

Central banks tame inflation as unemployment rises

Mortgage foreclosures trending higher as banks post record profits

Wartime Expenditures Ease Recessionary Fears

Deficit Hawks Ensure Tax Stimulus to be Offset by Reductions in Social Programming

Income and Wealth Gaps Widen

Government Bailouts Fail to Slow Job Losses

It doesn't take a Harvard MBA to figure out what's going on, though it certainly makes living a lot easier if you have one.

Just put your head down and work—success doesn't come easy.

Put your heart and soul in it—no one's irreplaceable.

Give 110% ... for starters.

Embrace change.

Be flexible.

Seek advantage—competition is for losers.

Yep! That's why we're all gathered here today, packed together so tightly that every exhale from your neighbour is your next inhale. So close you can hear their thoughts, smell their last meal, feel their heels. So, why in God's name would we be moved by a jester, a joker, a jokester, a clown, a harlequin? Could such a foolish story written for college kids really evoke anything more than the rolling of eyes from those of us who have become battle-hardened and work-shaped by the workaday? Nope, we approach our future stone-faced as if we're all heading to a funeral. This is what's real ... and it's too damn depressing to think about let alone discuss with intellectual aloofness.

But hold on! Step back and imagine this. Once we get to where we're going and come back above ground, this is what hits us:

Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of [everyone], tinkling on the [sidewalk] and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans!*

For a brief moment wouldn't we laugh and cry and shout as if we were quite mad—a deeply repressed ecstasy vented in our madness? Wouldn't we be able to breathe deeply? Feel our blood pressure drop? Forget about the post-it notes in our heads? Enjoy the moment?

Naturally(?), in short order, order would return and we would resume our roles and return to schedule. But wouldn't the memory be worth having even if the 'reality' never again materializes?

"Union Station, this stop. Union Station." The cars disgorge their contents onto to the concrete platforms and all daydreaming ceases. We lose our man in the human flood.

_____

* This extended quote is from Harlan Ellison’s short story, ‘Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman.’