Thubes and the Japanese Satirical Transportation Network; plus notes
Going to meet X. Down into Thubes underground. Ramps this way and that. Growing uncertainty as to whether have reached the right platform. Signage to unfamiliar destinations; so much new construction since last was here! The matter of tokens: these, too, changed; what’s acceptable >> much more fluid. Barter; even livestock: kittens. These set mewling into cardboard boxes. Sets of teeth stacked on shelving at back of agent’s booth; sandwiches, snacks: dried fruit and cheese cubes. Trade. Still, have not the required. Search pockets. Samaritan among sparse stream of travelers offers twenty-three dollar note: crude pencil sketch amalgam of unknown political, corporate figure?, and “23”. Enough, fine, accepted by agent. Pass turnstile as travelers behind unload for offer sacks of potatoes, imported feathers, eggs, jewelry. Further: ramps down, across; bridges, walkways. Through corridors. Train arrives, trains, always on opposite track, too short for platform; run, run, up stairs, down, over walkways, leap multiple steps. Once on platform, sprint to opposite end. Old bones, bruised ankles, accumulated strain on joints. Forget such pain; illusory!
More signage, crossed ramps, unfamiliar destinations. On train at last, stand at pole, watch stops skim past. Never stop at stops: stations, only vaguely familiar, bypassed. Train on, on, through dark of tunnel, emerges in bright leafy suburb, far past. X forgotten. Can’t think who was, is, X. Must be still to know. Travel, might be, erases reason :: movement displaces destination. Though, shrink at thought of arduous return: what corridors, ramps, what stops bypassed; for X, toward X; or if not X someone as good as X; or if not someone then somewhere X; no, original place of descent, chance of reemergence just there, lies under erasure:
System, entire Thubes construct, engineered by Japanese corporation as entertainment genre mocking American urban transportation. Ritual occasion for polite laughter. Attempts accuracy in every aspect; or yet, possible, may be earnest simulation out of respect, curiosity; but system only gains real character as failure of replication in important details. Maze-like aspect, for one, exaggerated; swinging bridges and rope catwalks, artfully obscured sight lines, unreadable signs in flickers of alien script, contorted, glossy, tile-lined corridors;
NOTES:
Invocation of details to make one world distinct from another; of worlds, its Words. Words, constituting description of system, accounting for, being vital to, physical architecture. Details of decay, worthy of Lebbeus Woods, architect of dissolution. Never the pristine beam but the corroded. Never the vertical but the oblique. Ever the sagging Word, and its physical correlates: telltale of dream-objects composed from descriptions, as opposed to, v.v., descriptions from prior objects. Few, now, of the latter. Poverty of, might say, texture, of description-descripted objects. Akin to scotoma-space: a void in scintillation.
Thubes, the ghostly center, as though city replaced city. Thubes a word held in reserve, yet viral, omnipresent. When think “city”, “Thubes” displaces. Yet Thubes-word never uttered, nor ever is uttered inner-thought of Thubes. Inner lips mime “Thubes” yet these recursive lips, too, stilled. Transportation system encapsulated in “Thubes” an internecine struggle between Word and Thubes, replacing Word and word. As well, all candidate Words displaced by “Thubes”. In sum, all else stilled than Thubes.
To speak, try; stop; try; at last stop. Catwalk, up ramp, down, corridor, too late for trains, for X, give any token to appease:
j.a. van wagner ©2024 2024.11.14