public transportation...or the royal baby.

Public Transportation; or, People Are People

The first time I moved a long distance from where I grew up, I thought people would somehow be different. Like going from suburbia Ohio to Chicago--nope Midwestern through and through. Go to a spendy restaurant in Chicago and the waitress/waiter looks just like the one off interstate 71 and route 18's Big Boy.

Ok, Midwest is Midwest...so California, here I come. The Romanian family downstairs and across the courtyard resembled my friend's family in Valley City whose dad could be seen in the neighborhood with a beat up old pick-up truck piled high with scrap metal. In Anaheim, the Romanian family, the Moise's, it was a beat up old mini-van and it was stuffed each weekend with scrap cardboard.

Growing up in Ohio people would drive by and hate on you—a finger or a scowl—demonstrated that it wasn't you they hated but their own lives. In Florida once, when I was riding over the Harbor Bridge on my bike, a guy in a pick-up threw a McDonald's medium sized soda at me. I flew the bird at him and as I crested the bridge and began coasting down the other side, I could see the guy in the pick-up who'd just hurled his drink at me standing in the parking lot at the bottom waiting. That's some typical mid-west shit, but instead this was "paradise," as I'd heard so many people refer to Florida.

The first time I saw a homeless person was in Toronto. I was like ten, our family was spending a couple days in town and it was our first night in the city. We'd just left a Chinese restaurant and walking back to our hotel and I was lagging behind everyone, generally being amazed by the Toronto night and saw a raggedy looking guy sitting against a building begging. I turned, flipped a quarter to him and he winked at me and smiled. When I lived in Long Beach I met and befriended a guy named Pedro. He had a dog and liked Popov Vodka. I used to get him a pint every weekend. I was poor, he was homeless. He was always just outside a drugstore every Friday night and every Friday night I'd get him a pint and we'd talk. In Portland, I knew Jimmy, he hung out in the Park Blocks and I'd smoke him out whenever I saw him. By the time I moved to Florida, I was becoming as old, or older than the homeless people I'd run across. I knew a couple guys who'd set up home behind a tiki-bar down the road from where I lived. I would go get a drink, stop by the liquor store and walk back behind the strip mall and sit under the stars with French and Bongo, like those two guys from Of Mice and Men.

This is one of the things I miss about speaking fluently, I can't indulge in my past-time of getting to know a guy. Here in Berlin, a guy sits on my street corner in a wheelchair with signs strategically placed on his person and chair, "bottles," "change," "cans," etc...I often wonder what he would do if I grabbed his change and ran. Most beggars kneel on a rug or mat, and hold out their hands in front of them in an ascetic and submissive pose. I don't get to talk to these people because I can’t convey subtleties. At the park where I read a lot, a guy comes by frequently and stops and talks to me in German and I try to understand him but it's an uphill struggle and despite my, "Ich weiss kein deutsch," he continues to talk to me, as if I'm not telling him the truth. I'm glad he persists—it helps us both.

In Prague they kneel and lean their upper bodies forward with their foreheads pressed upon the pavement in front of them, arms outstretched cupping a hat or cup in their hands, in a tortuous devotion to their unworthiness. In LA, they approach you aggressively. In Portland they are in packs and don't really ask for anything, the kids do, but they all have homes and family who love them. In New York and Chicago they always try to provide a service, wash your windows or shine your shoes. In Florida, they sell you crap, like bags of oranges. Everywhere though—they hold signs, people laugh and are more generous with the honest ones, "need a beer."

I've taken public transportation in every place I've lived. Public trans in America, with few exceptions, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, and New York, is relegated to the people who can't afford their own car. In LA, if you're standing at a bus stop, you endure a stream of down cast and condescending glances and stares. You wait in the heat next to a pole that may or may not have a sign, likely doesn't have a bench, and almost certainly no shelter, and the schedule is more like a cruel hoax than a tool for punctuality. Waiting for a bus in LA should be approached in a Zen way. Having to rely on the bus means you have nothing to do that needs to be done on time. If you have a job and use the bus, you pretty much have to afford two hours each way for travel time because most of that will be spent waiting for a bus to arrive. And the people who are on the bus are miserable creatures and bat-shit crazy.

Portland was the first place I took public transportation with which people used and relied on as a form of transportation. They have buses, trains, and trams that all pretty much run according to schedule. I used to marvel at the number of conversations I would get into with people on the bus or train. Most definitely there are some loons on the bus here too. One time I saw this couple, a fat black mama was cuddling a small, a tiny little white man in a beard, he nuzzled her bosom and she cradled him as a mother does her child. She wore a spaghetti strap tank-top and Daisy Dukes—they looked, together as one, like a tube of soft cheese had burst at the seams.

I remember once waiting to catch the last line out of the Portland Bus Mall out to Southeast. It was fall, and the wind cut through the mall catching autumn leaves and trash alike. The marquee was flickering on and off and I couldn’t discern the time table. I waited and waited until finally I determined that I'd missed the last bus out for the night. It was two AM, I walked the 28 blocks and then some to my place.

I was living in Portland when they began the remodel of the Bus Mall, they were also adding a couple lines to the tram and train system. Everyone, no matter where you live, bitches about construction. By the time Portland was refurbishing its transportation I was fluent with the system so figuring out the detours was a matter of a slight, easy adjustment. I've visited Portland since the renovations and it's impressive. But in Berlin where construction is a way of life, reading the detours is considerably more challenging and frustrating. However, familiarity has made it relatively painless. Especially since I've realized that construction is less of a reaction to something broken and more a proactive approach resembling upkeep and maintenance. In Berlin, they don't "repair,” they maintain on a schedule. They don't wait for it to break, they keep it in good running condition on a rotating schedule and little spots are shut down and re-routed. In the major stations there are signs in English and German, even workers who speak both languages are standing around waiting to help, albeit, resentfully, should they have to speak English.

The resentment is tiring. Especially since most Germans are wearing American-style clothing, listening to American music, and saying American pop-signature idioms, like YOLO. One thing I find particularly disturbing is the Johnny Cash shirts sold at Primark...do they even know who Johnny Cash is?

German public transportation is amazing. I can get by train or bus to any location in Germany. Any small town or village anywhere in Germany is accessible by train or bus....anywhere! And, if you compare any public transportation system in any American city, or for that matter, any other country in Europe, the German system is remarkably dependable. And yet, all Germans bitch about it. They all hate it. You see it in their faces as they ride...and they all ride...everyday, everywhere.

And yet, it's as if they have no idea how it works. Some stations are busy, others not so busy, and in all of them it’s as if all the people are riding the train for the first time. You come to a stop and the people waiting to get off have to activate the doors, otherwise, if no one is getting on or off, the doors remain closed. At all stations, the people inside the train are generally the ones who press the button to open the door. People pile up at the doors upon approach and incessantly press the button until it opens, even before the train has come to a complete stop, and then rush out stepping on old and young in an effort to get to the stairs first. Meanwhile, the people waiting to get on the train are shoving into the cars. In busy stations it's a comedy to watch—an epic battle to be first...to where? god knows.

The thing that's most strange about this entire battle is that this is not an automated system. The doors need to be activated by people getting off or on, and the conductor, a human, is monitoring this back and forth. If the station is very busy, the conductor watches and waits for the transition and if you're standing there waiting to board, you really don't have to worry, the conductor will wait. Yes—if you are dashing down the stairs and the platform is clear, and you are hurling your body at a closing door, the conductor will laugh inwardly and watch as you curse and flail obscene gestures—and away the train will go. But, if the train is packed, and you’re lodged behind a stroller, a couple bikes and an old blind wizard, you will have to "entschuldigung" your way out of the train, and some people who are not intending to get off but are close to the door, will have to step out and let you through, and then those boarding will shove the people who generously stepped aside back into the train as the battle continues. But, this is not their first time on this trip. Everyone has been the person shoved away from the door—felt the desperation as they try to get out. So why, for god's sake, why doesn’t everyone just relax and let the system work. A pile of people standing on the platform, patiently waiting for off-loaders, will not go unseen by the conductor. He will wait. The people who want to get on—just wait until the off-loaders get out, so fear doesn’t strike their hearts every time they want to get out of a crowded car.

At times I find myself getting caught up in it, and it's embarrassing. There are stops that I am very familiar with and I know whether or not I should be at the front or back of the train in order to gain access to the best exit from the platform. I can tell if the train is short or long, which cars will have more people, and how to maneuver a bike on and off in Neukoln or Kreuzberg during rushour. I have a tremendous bell on my bike and when I'm in the mood I use this bell, and it sounds like that Dukes of Hazard horn muscle cars of my youth used to blow obnoxiously throughout the neighborhood. I smile broadly and people stare and scowl at me and I revel in my glory.

dark

I did a lot of camping last summer on my bike trip. Never anything primitive, people were generally around, except for France. I found this day camp for scouts and family affairs, large group outdoor activities, but open from dawn to dusk. So after dark I was alone, but the location I'd found, while off the beaten track, was still groomed and maintained by the french national park systems, far from primitive or wild.

The first time I ever went alone, into the wild, at least as wild as you can get in the west of America, which is still surprisingly wild, I will always remember. South of Tuscon, an hour maybe, Mount Lemon, a saguaro forest, a national forest I think. My car was the only one in the parking lot, it was late winter, but warm enough to camp, no snow, but I had a good sleeping bag and was warm easily at night. I hiked all day without seeing anyone, I was 23 or 24 and could hike easily with a pack, it was as if I carried nothing at all, it was all on my back.

Daylight was easy, lonely, but easy and I spent my time hounding for rocks, examining animal excrement, making up stories, visualizing my future, studying my past. As the sun set and the night air cooled the landscape I began looking for a place to camp. This was before internet, mobile phones, and electronic devices. I didn't have a walkman, so I looked for a stream to camp near.

I had a decent pack, carried a supply of dried foods, campstove, lantern, fuel, and a notebook and pen. I had camped my whole life. My dad instilled this in me, my friends all liked camping too, so camping wasn't a thing for me to be worried about. When I left my car behind in the parking lot and the sun shone in the sky I didn't consider the darkness.

I found a nice place, it was shaded, with a small clean stream that sort of hooked into a little nook and then back down into a bigger stream a few hundred feet away, it looked as if someone had used this place to camp before me. I set up my tent, threw my sleeping bag inside and opened up the vents and after starting a fire admired my little plot. I kept busy, gathering wood, reading, writing notes, imagining I was like Thoreau. It wasn't until years later that I learned that he was kind of a fraud and what I was about to experience was pretty unique.

Actually it wasn't until a few days ago, while reading Kafka on the Shore, that I recognized how special that moment was. Murakami, in his novel, makes a reference to Ben Franklin and lights and how prior to electricity man lived truly in the dark. That made me think about that camping trip back when I was 23. I had camped alone before, but always with other campers nearby or supplies, or a toilet or an outhouse or some form of civilization. This time was different. Nobody was around. I was alone. As darkness came I didn't think about the cavemen, or medieval times, or the Greeks, I thought about what I would do, who I was, where I was going, why I was here and my first instinct was to flee. Pack up my things and hike back to my car and go back home. I was afraid of the dark.

I'd always been afraid of the dark. As a child, if my mom told me to go down to the basement to get something, I'd rush down, grab what it was she wanted and with cold chills rushing up and down my spine speed back up the stairs imagining some hideous monster hot on my trail and burst thru the door and into the house before it could get me.

Now, in the darkness of the Arizona desert, there was no door to burst thru. I tried to cook some food and to eat but I was so overcome with loneliness and fear that eating just didn't suit me. I didn't know then what I was experiencing. I didn't make the connection to what Murakami was trying to express, that for most of human time people lived in this darkness and it was a part of them. Like the morning sun, like fresh dew on a field of grass, like a congregation on Sunday morning, like harvesting a bounteous crop or gathering wood from the forest--there was a life just as long and just as meaningful to us all, and it was in the dark.

People gathered with wooden bowls filled with tallow and lighted and they went into a hole in the ground and then painted walls and prayed. Not prayer as we know now, prayer more closely to paganism, as if drawing a picture of a bison would bring a promising hunt, or carving a figure of a woman with a big belly would bring a child, or placing a pile of grain on the temple of Neptune would bring a lusty rains and a good harvest.

Some people knew it was not real and they profited from the darkness. Maybe a shamen or a priest or a guardian of the temple, but most of us feared the darkness and we lived in it despite ourselves and when we woke and the sun was shining, and dew dripped from our crops we rejoiced and worked.

Darkness came, parents sent their children to bed and they stayed up long enough to get ready for the morning. Maybe they had company and drank wine or beer and they told stories or laughed into the moonlit night. Maybe they walked along together holding hands. Maybe they went straight to bed too. Maybe there wasn't enough wood to keep the fire going all night and they froze under layers of wool. Maybe their experiences haunted them and stood like spectral apparitions in the corners of their minds reminding them of the horrible things they'd done. But they had candles or lamps or fire, but before there was fire they didn't fear the dark...I don't think.

I think they transformed, like the ghosts they believed existed, they changed too. And that first night in Arizona, I transformed too. I had a dream, but I don't think I slept while I had this dream. It was a landscape similar to the one I'd hiked that day. Saguaro cactus peppered the mountains and flames shot up like some avant-garde light show, straight from the earth, and sounded like flames should sound when you are alone in the dark. I saw this dark landscape of fire and red and heard the sound of steel striking steel, and witnessed the swinging of hammers, of huge Orc-like monsters working their hammers upon anvils the size of VW Beetles. I walked along unnoticed thru this landscape and sweated in the cool Arizona night.

I think before electricity, before lamplight, before candles were prevalent, people lived in the darkness just like they lived in the sunlight and it created in us two sides that still exist in us today. How could it be any different. So long we lived like this, so long we were two different beings. In the morning sun in us we worked and in the moonless night we dreamt. And it was natural, pure, it was not something we questioned. These were not myths or fairy tales, it was simple, light and dark, and while I feared the dark on that first night, the second, third, and fourth nights I dreamed too, I still was afraid, but I grew familiar with how to deal with it. I hiked long hard days and in the mornings I felt invigorated and lusty and as the sun set over the next mountain I began to prepare for the darkness.

I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not sure I know now what I was doing, but I think I was getting close to living.

Darkness will come today but it will never be the same. Last summer, when I biked across Europe, I never once let my phone die, I always found a place, just before the nighttime came to charge the battery because I knew darkness would come and I am still afraid of it. In Slovakia and points east the wild returns to the earth. Last summer, in the west of Europe, I never saw true darkness, civilization is permanent, but I can imagine in parts of Slovakia, Ukraine, and Russia, there is wild darkness again where people gather in caves for protection.

Slovakia, Michalovce, Mike's Sheep...

I like Slovakia. The people are nice, mid-western nice. I feel at home here. It feels like Poland in a lot of ways--the countryside, conditions--economically--both countries are poor financially.

My lung isn't healed completely and the long trip drains me but adrenaline and excitement and soon I've stopped listening to my body. I pay for it and sleep 18 hours over the next 36, that and I'm reading, Kafka on the Shore, Murakami. Sputnik Sweetheart  is a much better novel.

Mirka gave me perspective on Murakami that I didn't think about. She has a cautious optimism regarding Murakami that since our discussion have influenced how I perceive Murakami. For instance, before our discussion I was determined that I should make a pilgrimage to Japan and meet the writer who could write metaphors never before uncovered by humans, to after our discussion...well, now that you mention it, this does seem to have a pattern to it that could be formulaic and premeditated.

The stories have all been written, it is difficult to be original. Being Genuine is easy, once you've grown tired of trying to control your path and recognize that all you have to do is hop on board, like a train, then the story can be told in this newfound freedom.

I'm done with Murakami tho, but not because I'm disillusioned, I just need to move on. Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet, says to read and examine what about the writing you admire and follow this path no matter what you read. I'm reading some canonized stuff that I have to get ready to teach. I'm going to trace my own experience in testing this hypothesis with notes and reflections and try to design my curriculum on my own practices I use in order to understand these texts.

Jason has given me some great reads lately. Every time I go to Prague, which has been frequently, he gives me something that blows my mind and gets me rollin'.

In Slovakia it is cheap. Round trip train ticket, in a sleeping cabin with first rate service, 75 eu, four night stay in a pretty nice hotel, 70 eu, food expenses for the same duration, less than hundred eu, including drinks. I was told by two people that my Slovak is good...you have to know me to know how hilarious that statement is.

The waitress I had was a gem. She was the waitress. The waitress, from morning to closing, and she was very good, I bet she does well in tips, which would be saying something because tips are insignificant and provides little if any motivation to be a good waiter or waitress. She is flying in the face of convention by being so good.

Jason, who's family I was "vacationing," with went to PSU with me, and we both postulate that we probably went to PCC Sylvania together but we never had occasion to meet. Having him and Mirka and their entourage of family has been a blessing. I'm lucky to have them so close and they put up with me and seem happy about it.

We get into some pretty wild conversations at times, there's an ebb and flow. For instance, the Murakami discussion was enlightening and a perspective on the other side of the spectrum or see-saw, I tend to rush headlong into things I like initially with abandon, like I said, I was ready to make a pilgrimage and all that carries with it. Another one was about discipline.

I was telling Jason that I thought the discipline that comes along with religion, when it meant something to "the people," kept the world in check. Even if the powers-that-be didn't adhere to them, the people did, hence "opium of the people," thing. But, in retrospect consciousness is expanding, opening, bursting, breaking, it's been let go from the reins.

He said, "You can't go back."

And I know this. "It's not going back, it's coming around, not a circle, they cannot touch on the go around. It's more like a spiral..."

I don't know if it's spiraling out or in toward a fine point, but half of half of half, and so on, the result provides no insights.

By now one of the kids has to go pishy-pishy and Jason and Mirka and Janna if she is there, are moving as a unit. It's beautiful to watch, Mirka seems to know Jason in some ways better than he does himself. She rolls her eyes sometimes without actually rolling them. They love and care for their kids and it is so clear, they are angels.

"Religion is hypocritical," he says.

"It is, but so what?" I ask, but he is glib and too quick to dismiss the question as a legitimate one. Why does it matter if it's hypocritical? if it serves a higher aspiration for existence? This is exactly what Marx predicted and it wasn't about communism, it was about capitalism. We've gotten there, it's slave and master, that's all there is now.

"Look," I try to organize..."We've already ran from religion. We did that when we became amoralists and chased the dollar, became full-on capitalists. We renounce religion or at least replace it with this new endeavor, the dollar. Then we get to a place were corruption is no longer a conspiracy but a way of life and figured into the budget. Well, a little cap on this, like discipline, rules to follow and live up to, to remind you to seek higher land."

"Who's going to make the rules? I have my rules, I don't want someone else making up my rules."

"That's the problem man," I am flailing my hands upward and jabbing the sky with pointed fingertips. "We make our own rules and then before you know it you're so far out of bounds that you forgot where you started."

The girls see a "crocodile," swing, you'd have to see it, it would take too many words to describe something that the essence is....the kids jump up and down and clap and laugh and rush toward it with incredible jubilance. Jason swings them and they laugh and look like they're having the time of their lives.

I say to him, "Sometimes I feel like adhering to something that is outside of my own sphere, is more beneficial, provides me more insight into who I am and what I'm capable of..." I pause and I realize how I must resemble the guy who takes the blue or red pill, in The Matrix, the one where he wants to go back in and pretend that he doesn't know the truth and be happy.

Between this year and last...

The distance from Dusseldorf, Germany to London is just about the same as going from Berlin to Michalovce, Slovakia. The major difference would be mountains and hills, the more significant difference would be if traveling by bike, the Dusseldorf to London route would be 75 percent bike friendly--i.e. bike paths. Neither Czech or Slovakia has bike paths and they're hilly and mountainous. 

Last summer i rode my bike 891 km thru Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England on a whirl-wind discgolf/beer-tasting/camping adventure that left me broke metaphorically and financially. 

This year, i took a train from berlin to prague (108 eu, first class), and from Prague to Kosice (69 eu, in a sleeping cabin), and then caught a ride with Jason Mashak and his entourage from Kosice to Michalovce where we stayed on a small mountain lake near a currently-being-refurbished castle. 

As I looked out the window of the train as the landscape rushed by, I was certain, had I rode this by bike it would have taken me twice as long as last summer's trip, simply because of the hills. Last spring I biked into Poland and the landscape in the area of Poland I was traveling was very similar to the terrain I was watching fly by on the train. On the poland trip, i was lucky to get 30 km in a day, and traveling in poland with only a roaming connection with spotty gps map on my phone is a bit like standing on the edge of a high cliff overlooking a rough sea. I think Longinus used this same image to help describe, "sublime," to the casual reader. Longinus describing, "sublime," is a bit like Freud describing, "uncanny." Somewhere in between all these images is the lost feeling from which you never escape while biking thru Poland. And the landscape from Prague to Kosice is much the same...let's say that I'm glad I didn't bike this trip. 

The guy I shared the cabin with was from Kosice, Jan I think, and he was here for his grandma's 80th birthday with his wife who was flying into meet them. He lives in San Francisco now and is a commercial real estate agent. He was a hipster better than any NW Portlander could ever be. We had a couple of beers with the guy down two cabins and he was Italian, living in Prague working for Exxon and going to meet his wife at her family's place in Kosice. I'm from Ohio--lived in Chicago, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kent, Ohio, Anaheim, Long Beach, Portland, Punta Gorda, Fl, and now Berlin. 

The train out of Prague was Russian Railways. The old east-block countries had different gauged tracks or width between the rails, whatever the case is, the tracks were different and that's been a big reason for the slow progress in this part of Europe. the tracks or the trains themselves need to be retrofitted so that one universal system could be installed and hence utilized in a united Europe. I am not an historian or even claiming this to be true. these are things I've heard mostly from older German people I've met. I've done no research to confirm any of this. 

Either way, it's clear the Russian Railways train was from the old east-block era and riding on a train, in the dark thru old communist country is like stepping back into my first grade class and getting into position under our desks in the event that Russia decided to drop the bomb on us. An exhilarating buzz hums thru my spine as i search the night wizzing by.