by Lauren Elkin
Copyright © 2021 Lauren Elkin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
Published by Semiotext(e)
PO BOX 629, South Pasadena, CA 91031
www.semiotexte.com
Special thanks to Juliana Halpert and Cecile Lee.
Cover photograph by Lauren Elkin.
Design: Hedi El Kholti
ISBN: 978-1-63590-153-5
Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England
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d_r0
No. 91/92
A Diary of a Year on the Bus
Lauren Elkin
semiotext(e)
for bunny, & for s.
“To me, a bus is a big machine for taking pictures,
a miraculous tripod to which we attach an imaginary camera,
a moving and dynamic tripod.”
— Hervé Guibert, Ghost Image
“De l’autobus, je regarde Paris.”
— Georges Perec, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
The following entries were composed in the Notes app on a yellow iPhone 5c over a period of seven months, from September 2014 to May 2015, while riding the 91 and then the 92 bus in Paris to and from the university where I taught twice a week, and occasionally during other trips on public transport. The goal was to observe the world through the screen of my phone, rather than to use my phone to distract myself from the world. Along the way I thought a lot about how people live together, and experience trauma on an everyday level.
That academic year brought both public and personal grief: the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks happened, and then a few months later I lost a pregnancy. The hardest thing to make sense of was how in an instant, the everyday can become an Event. That this could happen to any of us at any time caused me sometimes debilitating anxiety, especially after the attacks of November 13th, which occurred after this project was over but inflect my retrospective reading of it. Looking back to a daily record when you didn't know something massive was coming down the road can be as uncanny an experience as recalling the thing itself; it casts daily life in a dangerous hue, when you thought you were just going about your business.
When the Event is happening, we take to Twitter or watch TV or frantically refresh our news outlets, scanning for something more than the official news, some stray detail that will help us comprehend. It takes time to see the underlying causes, to build a historical narrative. But in the days surrounding it, the Event dwells in a particular space of unknowability.
Over time, the Event weaves into the everyday. People we see on the bus may have been at the Bataclan or know someone who was; the woman in the corner may have had a miscarriage last month. Other people are an immense mystery. We cannot right-click on them and download their history. We do not know where they have been or where they're going. But that they are going together, while companionably ignoring one another, seems of paramount importance.
I believe this is called community.
Some notes:
The 91 goes from Bastille to Gare Montparnasse (and back).
The 92 goes from Gare Montparnasse to Porte de Champerret (and back).
I get on at Port-Royal Berthollet, change at Place du 18-Juin-1940, and get off at École Militaire (and back).
Unless otherwise indicated, mornings are between 8:10 and 8:40. Afternoons are between 1:00 and 5:00, depending on the day.
Typing errors and omissions have been preserved where they weren't too disruptive, while others have been corrected for clarity.
first semester
09/22/14
Monday morning
Too early it's too early I hate morning classes I should not teach them. Even after a quick dribble from the Nespresso machine I'm not quite myself. I've got a seat on the inside next to the window. I lean my head against it and study anything with words printed on it. The map with the 91 bus route as it crawls along the Boulevard Montparnasse. A poster announcing an upcoming strike and consequent bus diversion. Encouragements, not threats, to validate your tickets. I look around at my fellow passengers. They seem calm in the knowledge that they have validated their tickets as they stare at the screens of their phones, little wells of blue glowing in the thick dark of morning. Tapping and swiping, tapping and swiping.
A sign published by the RATP gives advice:
Your telephone is precious. It may be envied. We recommend vigilance when using it in public.
I look down at my own phone. It is precious (it was expensive). I will take their advice. I will be vigilant when using it. I will carry out a public transport vigil, and use my phone to take in the world around me, to notice all the things I would miss if I were using it the way I have been, the way they all are. I'll use the phone to look around me rather than down at its screen. Instead of taking pictures that wind up in someone else's morning feed, I'll use the phone to see the world myself. Exercises not in style but in vigilance.
I type as fast as I can and sort out the autocorrect later.
09/22/14
Monday afternoon
On the Boulevard du Montparnasse is a store called L’espace tabac, tobacco space. We go past it every day on the bus. L’espace tabac in the morning, l’espace tabac in the afternoon. L’espace tabac going one way; l’espace tabac the other. I remember when Paris was all tobacco space. Now it's contracted to this one store. Out of the corner of my eye I see a man who seems to be petting an invisible animal, as if he were miming the animal being there, defining the shape of it in the air with his caressing hand. I look at him directly and it's his suede ankle boot he's touching, running his hand over the silken piles.
09/25/14
Thursday morning
Leaning against the pole, in a stoned sleepy stupor. Awakened by mewing—someone's brought their cat on the bus in rush hour. An early morning appointment at the vet? a needy feline who can't be left alone? I wish I could bring my dog to school but we'd all be so distracted we'd get nothing done and they're not paying all that money to hang out with a small furry creature. There's a time and a place for a dog. A guy sitting in the row in front of me is reading long text messages and I wonder what are they about? Professional, personal, a break-up, intricate dinner plans?
09/25/14
Thursday afternoon
A woman's saying the rosary a woman's putting on lipstick a woman's composing music on her MacBook with some kind of program I'd like to know more about, humming and snapping and holding her headphones close to her head. A man's listening to his headphones so loudly I hear all the details of the chanson, down to the lyrics, words that are well-adapted to our ballet of comings and goings, all our gettings-on, all our gettings-off. I'm exhausted. Teaching hard and not sleeping well. I mixed up Hunger Games with Divergent in a student conference today. Oh the shame.
et mon amourette / qui était trop jolie / vers d’autres conquêtes / bientôt repartie
09/29/14
Monday morning
Place du 18 Juin 1940. Waiting for the 92. Stopped for coffee at Starbucks. Made up a little ditty to keep myself company as I crossed the street. Got my cof-fee/Got my cof-fee/Gonna drink it/drink my cof-fee. The bus will be here in 5 minutes. I may be late. The other day when I was here waiting for the bus a woman asked me if her scarf looked ok. I told her yes yes it did, and quivered with joy at having been mistaken for a French girl who might know anything about scarves. Then I worried there was something wrong with her scarf, something I couldn't see, and that someone at her work would notice and either not tell her, and judge her for it, or tell her,
and then she would think back to what I said, and revise her opinion of me.
09/29/14
Monday afternoon
Oi. Manspreader. Bouge ton cul.
People get so into their phones they forget where they are. That they're in public and that there are other people around who might want to SIT DOWN
What is it about the bus that makes people not want to read the newspaper or a book but only their phones. Down below they still read on paper. Up here on the surface it's only screens.
10/02/14
Thursday morning
In the early sunlight the sea foam green sign on the 21's forehead glows gold, as if it were passing for another bus, the yellow 83 perhaps. Maybe at night when we're all asleep the buses sneak out and try each other's routes. At any rate neither of these buses is my bus. In the morning rush to work the world is a little messy. A Mercedes has climbed up on the sidewalk and waits there, its blinkers on; the car seems to know it's doing something not quite right; people of all ages scoot by on those razor things and sometimes they scoot into other people and everyone is grouchy but they move on quickly. There is much rushing across streets to make the light, especially from me, as you never know when the 91 bus might be lurking just down the road, ready to rush up the minute you're stuck waiting to cross the street. This morning I make the light, and sure enough the bus is approaching, almost empty. The magical mythical 8:12. I have made the magic bus. Almost as hard to catch as the cat bus in My Neighbor Totoro.
Neko no basu!
10/02/14
Thursday afternoon
Received a spam email with the subject line “Devolve, Gilmar!”
Thinking about what it means to be asking to be French because I have my citizenship interview tomorrow. Why do I want to be French? Who the hell knows? Because I've lived here for years and still have to go to the prefecture once a year, or every couple of years, and provide all the papers, only to find I'm short this one or that one. The anxiety of those encounters, being judged and found wanting, guilty of the offense of not making the right photocopies. And by this time I think I'm almost the last of my American friends not to have married a French person or found some job to sponsor me. I remain unaffiliated, or otherwise affiliated. I just want to be able to stay here and not to be hassled, not to be judged on my photocopies. And it would be nice to be able to vote. To have some say in things however small.
Evolve, Elkin!
10/06/14
Monday morning
Wtf are these Americans doing on my early morning commute and why do they I mean we talk so loud is it because we're shouting to be heard across the plains? Because we're not used to having neighbors? Have we struggled as a nation to build ourselves a place where we can talk as LOUDLY AS WE LIKE and then take it on the road, as a national characteristic?
This woman is telling a story like she's a barker at the carousel.
10/06/14
Monday afternoon
I've brought Jacques Roubaud's bus book with me to read. Thank goodness I write prose and don't have to worry about alexandrines. But then my language is more pedestrian ha ha. No time for wordplay, we're commuting here and I'm doing the best I can. Instead of wordplay timeplay. Phoneplay.
Roubaud's on the 29. All the buses that leave from Saint-Lazare start with a 2. All the buses that leave from Montparnasse start with a 9. I'm on the other end of his proposition. I didn't know this about numbers. 91 to the 92. 92 to the 91. Twice a week. Without even thinking.
Wikipedia, loading, loading, part-loaded, scroll, scroll, got it.
Line 91. First operated on 12 November 1945. The line runs from 6 am to 1 am Monday through Saturday, and 7 am through 1 am on Sundays and holidays.
It connects three train stations:
Montparnasse
Gare d’Austerlitz
Gare de Lyon
(Which is why there are always people with suitcases.)
Six hospitals:
Saint-Vincent-de-Paul
Baudelocque
Cochin
Val-de-Grâce
Pitié-Salpêtrière
Quinze-Vingts
(How many of these people are sick?)
And connects with eighteen other bus lines.
I'll leave that list to another day.
10/09/14
Thursday morning
Everyone's up and out already and I join them this morning, the guy in the chair upholstery shop is there with the chairs, the guy in the caterers is there receiving deliveries, I walk past a man entering a porte-cochère who drops his cigarette butt as I walk by and the smell of the tobacco wafts up to me and for a moment mingles with the cold morning air and it's like a proof of life. You don't want to get a lungful of it: just a whiff of someone else's smoke, as the spark goes out. I'm glad all these people are out here doing what they're doing, and my bus comes and I perch on a backwards-facing seat. Really annoyed by people who sit on the outside seat leaving the inside one empty. Unless you have a physical inability to slide over, slide the hell over! Even if you're getting off soon! The person who sits on the outside will understand. It is their responsibility to understand and to get up for you, just as it is your responsibility to move over for them. Bus ethics people—give it a try.
10/09/14
Thursday afternoon
There's a scruffy guy lounging over two seats who is clearly not interested in sharing so I sit somewhere else. Then an elderly man gets on and says excuse me, may I sit here please and the young scruffy guy gets up and mutters casse-couilles, putain.
By the door, as I wait for my stop, a man in a hat looks out the window and says “sarkozy.”
10/13/14
Monday morning
Too early. Too dark. Hate Mondays. You can't Instagram how hot it is on this bus. I'm sitting backwards and getting nauseous and want to close my eyes but that makes it worse. The woman sitting across from me practices piano fingering on her handbag. It's one of those Gérard Darel bags everyone had in 2007. I stare at the military details on a woman's jacket. I don't like them. When I saw her from the back I thought wow nice coat because it's a nice thick great wool and in the back it's cut well, like a man's coat, but actually there are cutesy pockets with piping and epaulettes and wrist straps. Downright gaudy. But from the back she looks smart, capable, interesting. Oh god there's a zipper.
10/13/14
Monday afternoon
At the stop where I change. A bus pulls away to reveal a distinct order written on the side of a post-office truck. Faites vos achats sur internet, c’est moi qui livre vos paquets. I clamber into a seat and move aside the coat of the man sitting next to me to keep from sitting on it. Excusez moi I say politely. I have a headache. He is wearing too much cologne. When this man gets off the bus I notice his head is completely bald under his blue woolen beanie. Not the kind of bald that comes naturally for some men with age. I don't know how I know he's been sick, it's just something I feel I know.
10/16/14
Thursday morning
What is that guilt, when you're sitting and other people are standing, and you think maybe they have more of a right to sit than me, I have no way of knowing, but then maybe I have more of a right to sit than they do, and I got here first, but can that really be the ultimate decider, I got here first? We haven't evolved any more subtle way of resolving this so I can feel like less of an asshole sitting in this seat on the bus looking at these women with dyed hair red hats pulled down jackets puffy age indeterminate they might be only a little older than me or they might be decades older.
I keep catching up with the older women.
10/18/14
Saturday afternoon
Mom with three kids, two in a stroller (twins?). Third one kicking repeatedly against the bench in the bus shelter. The same bench I'm sitting on. I grin and bear it out of solidarity. Three kids. Must be tough. Helped by science, the last pregnancy? (She looks much older than me and I'm long overdue myself.) A surprise split in
the cells, or whatever happens so you see new mothers of 42 with triplets (The third 21 and still no 91). The kid is now tugging on the wire that makes up the “back” of the bench so people don't have to lean against the actual bus shelter. Every time he yanks on the wire I'm thrust forward. By the third time I lean forward in advance. (Fourth 21.) I cast a gently irritated glance at the mother. She's too busy texting to notice what her kid is doing. One of the stroller children has a bloody gash on its nose. She eventually notices and touches it to see if it's wet. It is. She wipes her finger on her jeans and checks the kid's fingernails. They're the culprit: jagged as anything. Also it's freezing out and they're not wearing mittens. But maybe she's very busy and forgot to trim their nails and forgot the mittens. (I have been waiting for this bus for a half-hour. I get up and stand at the front of the line. I damn well better get a seat after a half-hour.) I consult my own phone, wondering if I'll be too busy to cut my own kid's fingernails one day, and how do you cut them anyway so they're not sharp, and I have an image of myself using a nail file on my newborn and that doesn't seem right either, maybe you just keep them in mittens til they're twelve and that way you'll never forget them. I look at the woman again and she's pulled out a cigarette. An hour later I pass the same woman and children on the Rue Guynemer.