The
Illusion of Movement
I.
I
stare out of the subway window, out at the darkness, as the
occasional light flashes
by when out of nowhere the tunnel, the earth itself, opens up and I
see another train below us--us, as if I'm a part of all of this, as
if these people in here are a part of me--and then it's gone, cut
off, the wall is back but something is different now, pictures
flicker by, a series of photographs, and as we--us again--pick up
speed the wall becomes a motion picture, a commercial on the Green
Line--even away from the TV we (goddamn it) can't escape them--pretty
people at the beach, burning on a suntan, wading in the water with
bikinis and boxers, but the images don't do what they're supposed to
do all they do is make me think of the suicide dolphins, the
self-destructive beached dolphins that appear every other year--the
hundreds! the hundreds!--to throw themselves on the sand and soak up
the sun as they gasp for breath and when the people--when the
heroes--come they can only save a few and we--they--cry.
II.
Never show the dead dolphins in the pictures of the beach, in the
commercials at the beach.
Never show the dead fish washing ashore, never capture the smell the fish bring, the rainy day fish
smell, the rotting body fish smell.
Never show the seagulls shit on
someone's head or into a child's ice cream cone.
Never show the hot
sand burning feet.
Never show the Portuguese Man o’ War, the
not-really-a-jellyfish jellyfish, floating dead a few hundred feet
away, still dangerous, still toxic.
Never show the fat people.
III.
Someone
blows out the candle and then the pictures are gone, the pretty
people are gone, and I can’t even remember what product they were
selling but it was probably beer or shoes or suntan lotion, which
would be the most logical but commercials are never the most logical.
I’m
back in darkness, back in the tunnel as the occasional light flashes
by and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the same light,
a single light, and I’m on a movie set, and outside is a man out
there with a light on a dolly, a light on a swivel he keeps spinning
around to give the illusion of movement as two or three other people
shake the subway car for extra effect.
The
conductor hits the brakes hard and I fall into the woman next to me
who looks at me with dagger eyes as if it was my fault and I fumble
out a sorry, tell her I didn’t mean it in the slightest and she
calls me a little shit and pinches the back of my arm, digging nails
into flesh, drawing blood, making me scream a high pitch whiny bitch
scream, but I don’t say anything to her.
The
doors open and I know it's not my stop but I get off anyway and turn
back as the doors close. She breaks into a smile and waves goodbye
with her finger as I stand there staring, rubbing my arm, waiting
for the next train.
