שיפוצים בשמיים

Waiting till it's going to be like that again.

Today a mirror broke in the sky over the city and its pieces hurt my window disguised as hail.

Or they were undergoing some major redecoration up there, with bulldozers and knocking down old buildings. שיפוצים בשמיים

University of the Tube

Excuse the length.

And after all this talk about the weirdness of the Polish transportation system I entered the London tube to be lectured for a quarter of an hour by a former, hmmm... hippie. Topic of the lecture: the falseness of the Valentines Day. Luckily for the long-haired around 40-year old guy in a thick, orange cotton jacket there was a problem with the train and so it spent around 10 minutes pointlessly standing on a station and than stopping between each of the upcoming two ones. If I believed in him, I would see a touch of god in all this, maybe it was his emissary trying to bring people back to reality, perhaps the only person without falsehood and kind of beyond all the middle-class stiffness and form. (Like the mental brother in Revolutionary Road.)

I was silently sitting on the District line, happy that I ma taking a shorter way and still excited after seeing Shahrukh Khan on a festival that day. A woman next to me was knitting a purple glove and a big-eyed, semi-emo teen opposite to her was reading Tom Stoppard (Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, for those interested) occasionally shaking back his perfectly scruffy hair and looking >out of the window with melancholy. And than the talk started, interrupted with an occasional chord on a guitar. We were kindly welcomed on the day of falsehood, on which the sight of couples holding hands and boys presenting girls with flowers make him and his girlfriend sick. Today and on the New Year’s eve, he said, me and my girlfriend have a day when she can tell me I hate you, you bastard, and I can cal her a stupid old cow. An interesting practise I shall say. But I see his point. After that an entertainment part followed, i.e. a really stunning version of Kiss from A Rose (which he termed a song about cocaine addition). Not only did he have a marvellous voice but he could accompany himself on a guitar, and the tara ra ra rara ra ra ra part did not sound cheesy, kol ha kvod lo. Seriously. I could listen more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WV5sc8xorU&feature=related

And to the right something strange. Equally to this whole event. 'Jake the bus' CCTV in operation beware. And apparently someone is living there. Only in Acton.

If he did not achieve his aim, which I would define as drawing the attention of the public to the idiocy of the festival of simulation, when people do what they think they are expected to (by whom?) just to suit the rest. So, if he didn’t manage to wake up some members of the despised middle-class, at least he initiated some interaction between the passengers, something that NEVER happens on British public transport, believe me. Who cares if people were making fun or commenting on him, at least they talked, were more alive than they are for their whole boring office-tied day. The glove-knitter found a line of understanding with a lady sitting behind her, for both of whom this meeting with a hippie was not a first one. I think I should take this line more often. A surreal train. From a perspective of not even a week this whole thing seems to be like a queer dream. Stranger it seems, yeah.

Flashes of London

Besides, London is like a set of islands , Dalmatian coast type. Euston, Camden town, Covent Garden, Ealing Broadway. Each of them is like a small world, with its own inhabitants and laws, all together creating a multi-cultured multiverse of London. Everything multicoloured and joined by multicoloured (tube) lines to form a constellation.

I wanted to go Petticoat Lane market, and according to the map I was to get off at the Liverpool street station, where upon ascending from the darkness of the underground I encountered the Bullet just in front of me accompanied by its natural satellites, i.e. the planetoide belt of suit-wearers. Take a small street in the opposite direction and after mere 100 metres you are on an Indian planet, where street names are written in hindi and the smell of deep fired,
syrup soaked sweets fills your nostrils (sticks to your clothes), and the whole lane is stuffed with stands with all you do and all you don't need, but ulay be khol zot. And just by the way, it is all built on the former Jewish district. This is how the multiverse of London evolves. Like filo pastry. Or lasagne. Or Schwartzwald cake.

Paralyzed sardines on Nothing Hill Gate.

People in the underground are like ants. Following the same routes one by one, in well organised processions, carrying their indispensable briefcases to built, what, new world? New order? Though from the newspapers they leave on the tube everyday one could build a replique of the whole of London made of paper mache. Or shelters for the homeless standing on every, ok, not every second, but perhaps every 5th corner, selling the Big Issue. No homeless dogs here, no animals other than pets, probably having their own rooms and wearing personally designed jewellery (you no longer call it a collar). I recalled the words I have already heard too many times, it’s must be so great to live in London, try to recall it, believe me you will with no difficulty packed like sardines in a tube at 6.37 on the central line zone 1,
stuck in between an Indian sleeping on the middle pole (yeah neither north nor the south :P ) and a blonde on high heels chewing gum on volume level 9/10, ten being the decibel limit to hurt your ears. Better than a Polish bus perhaps, where old ladies (well, calling them ladies is a big misinterpretation of their status and class of behaviour) coated in fur armour and always carrying a set of re-used plastic bags full of mysterious contents. I think they all conspire to build a nuclear reactor and blow up the city - centre of moral depravity and easy virtue.

And in all that you are pressed against the doors, forming a nice modern, bloby-like pattern of your nose and mouth outstretched right on the glass. That’s what the notices in the tube describe as obstructing the doors I’d say. Stand clear of the doors and when they open, you are just pushed out by the crowd of the tube-ants suddenly making a ‘towards the doors’ move. Obviously, British politeness and sensibility ends confronted with the necessity of sticking to the place in the carriage, so no one, even those standing right in the middle, will not move. Suddenly the plan of the line, which they know by heart after travelling with it back and forth everyday for the past 5 boring years, gained in interest, or they are taking part in a live sculpture artistic project, or playing one of this child-games: who moves first is a dumbbell. No, no, the TRUTH is they are educating themselves about the last-night’s of Robbie Williams and the visit of the weather presenter of BBC1 in Sainsbury local instead of Marks&Spencer Food. It goes without saying they can not be disturbed in this utterly brain-consuming, and though enhancing activity. It would influence the deepness if their family dinner discussion, we can’t allow that.

Al hanahag sheratza lihiot elohim

What a place. Today I took one of those buses usually occupied by old ladies in fur armour (i mentioned it before) and fur helmets, a Polish version of a hijab perhaps, because sometimes one can only see their eyes, blinking with suspicion at all travellers aged lower than a dinosaur. Feeling slightly intimidated by their company I tried not to be there – quite hard with a pierced nose and vividly green skirt. I couldn’t even try to sneak into their mercy by participating in the common discussion (bus driver involved too, of course, a hidden supporter of the Old Ladies Team) about the EXACT coordinates of a certain veterinary clinic – a second most important shrine of the Berets (a common nickname for the old ladies) and the like. After considering some options the instigator of the topic got off and we may only hope that she didn’t make it to the clinic and her neighbour will not have to hear the ‘sweet voice’ of her beloved hyena, in other words a dog which regardless of its size barks in a high pitch tone and at everything - including his masters. I think it’s a special breed. For the protection of the endangered species – Polish Old Ladies (further referred to s POLs).

So I am in those beautiful circumstances, on one of the longest bus lines - the cursed 171 (POLs find it of particular interest, the longer the better, a second life type of a thing, that is why at the afternoon hours you have no ticket control, the inspectors made room for the POL gang, I wonder how they fought for supremacy – by making pierogi?)... and pit’om I hear one of them, standing by the middle doors and screaming ‘but WHYYYY didn’t yaaaa stop at the buUUS stOP?’(notice the intonation) and the poor driver stopped immediately and in panic opened the doors for the two infuriated, puffed up passengers. (Obviously those on the missed bus stop didn’t have chance to get in, but what kind of a deal would that be exchanging the two for more than that). And as an expression of sorry he shouted in a (surprisingly!) truly concerned voice: kuuurna zapomniaaaaałem! (fuuuck I forgoooot!). It is the only occasion when a bond forms between non-Beret passengers, eye-contact and muffled half-smiles. After all the bus driver is not a god (did anyone read Keret?).

Flashbacks from the flight

No matter how often I fly it always amazes me how a metal box can simply ascend and in a virtual few moments bring the passengers to a totally different reality. It’s almost like a fantasy tale, enter the doors in your wardrobe and you are in a world of fairies and flying lions. In my case rather grumpy grey old ladies, rude bus drivers and one line of the underground, all sprinkled with rain and wet snow. I like the moment of the take off, never believing it will actually happen that the machine will, well how to say it, take its wheels off the lane, a feeling perhaps equalized to what the nurses experience every time a new baby is born.
A miracle of varied origin – biology and human invention. And shortly after the flight’s start there is this moment of suspension, when a plane seemingly stops in the air, still not being entirely parallel to the ground, and people hold your breath thinking, that is the end, now straight down, but I in my hear see the whole sequence in a rewind mode, the plane going backwards exactly the same route it took, it is the moment of reconsideration if you really want to abandon, temporarily or forever, the land you are departing from. Well, but not much to do at that point, just pray for a plane catastrophe, of course only a small one, lets revoke our minimalist inclinations, just a mild turbulence, falling down nicely, with the crew still smiling, perhaps 2 or 3 passengers injured, after all it is an accident. If your prayer is to weak, or if there is no one to answer (lets not enter THIS discussion now) you can still marvel at the view. I saw a spilled mercury, solid and silver curiously partially reflecting the sun rays and partially absorbing them... the widest highway in the world!, ah that’s the S-shaped ThameS. And the countryside, or suburbian, sets, lines of houses, like cookies (maybe I was just hungry) “babciowe ciasteczka z maszynki” topped with a cloudy whipped creamulonibus, pronounced with a wild Polish accent, Krim-on-the-Top, encountered only in Starbuck’s.