Cetaceus

By Petra Zlonoga

One is true, the other is a fiction.

1.
On the 34 in the morning a man enters the typically cramped and ricketous trolley car somewhere around 36th or 37th street. He is large and round, and his eyes are wide and stare around the car in such a way as to make everyone near him feel uncomfortable. He is bald and has a hoodie draped over his body by wearing the hood over his head without having his arms in the sleeves. It is sweltering today and I am uncomfortable for him thinking about how hot I would be if I were wearing a hoodie-hood like that, even in the nominally cooler trolley during the underground portion of the movement toward City Hall.

A minute or so after he gets on, the man, like so many other men I have seen in this city, begins to talk loudly to no one and everyone, in a languid but clear voice above the rustle and squeaks of the trolley on the tracks. It is what he says that catches my ear, as he begins announcing all of the trolley stops in order, although not as they come, and listing the connections and points of interest at each one just as the drivers are supposed to do. We are still on the west side of the river when he wails aloud for “City Hall! Free interchange for Broad and Market subways! Suburban Station! City Hall!” and so on for each stop. I loose him somewhat when he does the call for 30th street station, as it has the longest list of connections, exchanges and other mentionables.

It is clear to me that this man is psychically traumatized, imprinted or even scarred by the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority. I guess I could say the same for plenty of people, myself included, as I had the uncanny sensation of hearing myself follow along every last connection, free interchange and land-, birth,- and blight-mark on the cityscape as he rattled them off in his hurried but otherwise accurate litany. I knew everything he was going to say as he said it, the only difference being that he was saying out loud.

When I move, despite all the nausea and discomfort its given me, I will miss the 34.

2.
Mounting the spiral stairs and coming up and under from beneath the street and around the Clothespin, I pass a homeless man on the platform standing in for the usual guy and step out into the humidity and sunlight lingering around across the street from City Hall. Today is a day of substitutions. The new homeless man on the stairs has a direct and clear voice, asking for change in sentences that sound abnormal and out of place for this particular way point on my path through Center City. At this place I am normally greeted, comfortingly, by a kind of forcefully nasal, gruff, bearded and slippery refrain of “spare some, spare any, spare change, spare, spare for, spare’s’m, spare change, spare’s’m, God Bless, spare’s’m, God Bless, spare for, spare any, spare change, God…”

I pass him and come out onto the street. To my right, in both my line of sight and path toward work, is a well-kept Caucasian man in a suit passing out handbills. Like the man on the platform, he is also a stand-in for the usual guy who stands outside of Wendy’s like a carnival barker or old time newspaper boy, and absent today is his lament for “Dentist, dental care, check me out, dental care, dentist, check me out.” Instead I approach the suit who is simply handing out these small shiny flyers and saying nothing.

I approach and shift my bag, attempting to anticipate the contents of the handbills. Probably something political, I think. But getting closer and seeing the design they are too laden with information to be somebody’s slogan. Perhaps it’s a different dental offering, maybe pet grooming, a book sale, a charity or non-profit fundraising event. Maybe his company is hiring menial laborers, or perhaps they are building a sub-orbital rocket at the top of the Comcast building and are looking for volunteers—to be rewarded handsomely of course—as test subjects for the first few rounds.

By the time I approach the man and his outstretched arm reaches over to me I stare at first in disbelief and then with a sense of, for lack of a better way of saying it, moral repugnance when I see, no shit, dental care. The man attempts to give me one and I wave my arm dismissively at first, and then look him in the eye and tell him, “I don’t believe in anything” before walking off toward Walnut.

Like a set of superlatively awesome cultural nested dolls, it’s National Bike month this month, National Bike to Work Week this week, and it’s all culminating in Bike to Work Day this Friday.

If you’re not, you should be doing this anyway!

Vactrains.

Now this is a ridiculous engineering idea that I hope actually happens. Way better than that bridge across the Bering Strait nonsense.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately reading, writing, thinking and talking about Chinese politics. I was down at Fume last night with my favorite Russians and the conversation naturally turned to comparisons and contrastations about those two vast nieghbors. But life, of course, is not foreign affairs, and quite a few other things of note have been going on.

I’m continuing to prepare in earnest academically, financially, etc., for the move to Chicago, and I remain eager to again take up the academic burden, especially every time I go down the list at the Divinity school faculty page. It’s not often at all that one has the opportunity to settle into 2+ years of learning with these sorts of people, and I really do feel humbled that I’m going to have the chance after 6 years out here in the trenches to get back to what I genuinely feel is my calling. I suppose that’s an ironic turn of phrase in this case, what with me being a non-religious person (well, you know what I mean) who is about to go into gradute studies at a div. school.

Chief among topics of concern for me right now is, enjoyably, securing the appropriate gear for this adventure. Among other things, I need a new phone, I’m excited about getting a new bike–one better geared toward navigating the White City’s tremendous and famously flat stretches of roadway–and pouring over the fine details of the unparalled bags at Baileyworks. I think I am going to go with the 235, as not being a messenger myself I’d feel I was overstepping my bounds if I were to rock a Superpro. I do intend to start doing a lot more riding from here on out, and I wouldn’t even be looking at one of these bags if I didn’t intend to use it on a bike.

This is an important point, and you should take note: messenger bags are for bikes, not walking. Seriously, they are designed to fit the body astride a cycle, as the way the bag distrubutes weight is dependant on your posture as you ride. Bike posture and the messenger bag allow you to channel the weight across your back and down into the bike itself, such that it supports the weight of the bag, not your back or shoulders (as with a backpack in the same posture). However, the opposite becomes true with walking, where a backpack with chest strap is preferable so that your torso and shoulders are carrying your shit, not one shoulder.

I’m debating on whether to buy a new bike in Chicago or here in Philly. I may not sell my old one either, who knows.

In other internal-news, I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about various friends abroad, American and otherwise, as usual. There are so many folks spread everywhere that I would like to visit, or host as guests here, but these things tend to take forever. We miss these kinds of people, but I guess I can rest assured in the old line about absence making the heart grow fonder. The danger is always there that the line between you will break from the strain of such long gaps, but it remains, as always, a matter of faith. Venezuela was up on the docket for next trip, but lately I’m thinking more and more that I need to bump a visit to my sister in Thailand up to first place, or at least a quick trip back to the Continent to catch up with various European luminaries. Going back to school helps none of this, as my funds will surely dwindle fast this coming year, and my savings isn’t that hot right now either. The lesson? Never rent an apartment that is out of your price range. Never again anyway.

Back to work, to work. Back.

Couple of links sent to me from posts/discussions on Language Log, the most important linguistics blog/site out there. Though not a linguist, myself and plenty of other academically minded people follow the posts and discussions up there as they are reliably illuminating. Links are courtesy of my good friend D.H.

Chinese propaganda article on Tibetan (the language).

Interesting nationalist web-behavior.

And an article on Li Yang’s Crazy English, which is ever-interesting on a few levels: politically, linguistically, and educationally. Those of us who’ve had the experience of teaching English abroad can never really shake the methodological curiousity that arises with that work.

Huge respect to my people. And yeah, these are my fucking people.