by Lauren Elkin
10/20/14
Monday morning
Priority given to those who wish to close the windows, it says on the bus wall. Who decides these things? Child wearing a wolf hat with two long fabric pieces hanging down on each side, ratty white and pilling, dirty at the bottom. Observatoire-Port Royal and there's a big push to get off; I end up sitting not because I want to sit so much as it's the best way to get out of the way but now that I'm here I'm glad for the seat and guilty at the same time
10/20/14
Monday afternoon
A woman being harassed by a ticket agent. Apparently she didn't buzz in her Navigo pass. the machine on the right was broken. The ticket agent thinks she should have tried the one on the left. “But I pay my bills every month!” she protests forcefully. “I pay my fare! What does it matter if I touch in?” It matters. Her African accent and dress work against her. He's trying to give her a ticket. They're still arguing three stops later when I get off
10/23/14
Thursday morning
This window is the only thing keeping me upright. How am I going to teach Mrs Dalloway in this state? I think of looking at the book, as if the familiar opening paragraphs would jolt my brain into a functioning state. But I can't be bothered. Now I understand why my elementary school teachers always stank of coffee and cigarettes. The older you get, the more you have to soak yourself in stimulants to function in the morning
10/23/14
Thursday afternoon
God this bus is slow we've been crawling up the same stretch of boulevard for 15 minutes I can't bear it, I want to get home already put my feet up have a snack watch some TV kiss the dog. One Haussmannian building every couple of minutes. A Parisian way of measuring speed.
10/27/14
Monday morning
Girl on the bus with thin bony hands, a thick gold ring on one middle finger. Dark hair, cut in bangs, mulberry lipstick. I envy her. What does she see when she looks in my direction? My little boy hands? Dyed blond hair, lipstick too red for this hour? She looks natural and pretty. But her roots will go soon enough, and then she'll be next to me at the salon.
10/27/14
Monday afternoon
Reading The Years and this quote is good for that Zadie article I have to write. “The omnibus in which she had come, with its silent passengers looking cadaverous in the blue light, had already vanished.” Woolf's usually so humanizing to the people on public transport but this sounds like she's been reading The Waste Land, I had not thought death had undone so many, Zadie is much more human about the people on the bus, much more Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, all novels start with an old lady in the carriage opposite. Something's jiggling my arm. Jiggle jiggle jiggle. I look down. It's the child in the seat next to me tapping away on a little red blackberry. I assume it's a game he's playing, I can't really tell, the sunlight makes a glare on his screen. How old is he? Not more than 9?
10/30/14
Thursday morning
Your glittery sandals are awful but the rest of your outfit is good.
10/30/14
Thursday afternoon
The bus is on diversion and all hell is breaking loose.
— But—but—where's he going?
— What's he doing?
— What's going on?
— The fuck is he doing?
The foment builds and builds and I think they might rush the driver in his seat up there so he agrees to stop in unexpected places on this unexpected route. But he can't stop just anywhere. He has to stop somewhere safe. This doesn't matter to the woman who wants to get off right now right here and not a little ways down and for whom it is becoming increasingly urgent to get off right away no rightaway:
— Can I get off here? Or here? Or here? MONSIEUR IL FAUT QUE JE DESCENDE LÀ LÀ LÀ LÀ LÀ
11/03/14
Monday morning
Poetics of the city as viewed through the bus. The only time you're at this height. Not as high as a first floor but higher than the ground. You never move quickly. It's not like a car; there's no weaving no darting just a progression of stops and starts. You're always going forward. The 91, then the 92, making its way along the long boulevards, which curve north or south but never turn.The only time you see the city at this pace. You think you have a moment to take a quick picture of a caryatid, a poster, yourself reflected in the windows of the building, but just as soon as you've tapped and swiped over to the camera setting on the phone, the bus is moving again.
11/06/14
Thursday morning
Nearly there, Invalides slides up outside the window the phone picks up a song on shuffle come with me go places I can't listen to this album without thinking of this guy I knew once well that was years ago time to take back the new pornographers. a woman is reading an Actes Sud paperback she's covered over with pink paper.
11/06/14
Thursday afternoon
Catch up with email, catch up with Twitter, catch up with Facebook, catch up with Instagram, catch up with Pinterest, catch up with email. Catch up with Twitter, catch up with Facebook, catch up with Instagram, catch up with Pinterest, catch up with email, catch up with Twitter. Catch up with Facebook, catch up with Instagram, catch up with there's nothing new on Pinterest.
11/10/14
Monday morning
Girl nattering away on phone in too-close proximity. Tempted to read aloud from book I'm reading about Woolf's essays. Eh ben moi tu sais je ne voulais pas qu’elle me dise ce qu’il faut faire j’étais comme toi t’es qui tu me prends pour qui je savais pas quoi dire j’étais comme—ben tu vois c’est n’importe quoi tu vois tu vois and on and on. Woman leaning against the pole has her jacket misbuttoned, one panel hangs lower than the other, who will tell her? I see the same mother with her two kids boy and girl whom I see a lot if I catch the 8:12. Someone bumps my knees climbing over me to get to the inside seat. I would have moved if they'd asked. Thinking about how it took time to learn how to ride the bus in Paris, my friends mostly don't take the bus, they say it stresses them out, me too I get stressed when I don't know where to find the bus stop. But my bus stop to go to school is easy to find, right in the middle of the Boulevard Port-Royal. If I need to know which bus to take to get somewhere else I ask the RATP website. Their app is kind of shit. And they replaced all the bus stops one by one and installed fancy new LED signs that are supposed to tell you how long til the next bus comes but of course they never work.
11/17/14
Monday morning
Reading Species of Spaces. Why have I never noticed before how much Perec likes the word “parallelepiped?” Every time I teach Perec I'm more convinced I need to teach an entire class on his work. The way he sees the world, his awareness of how difficult it is to really “see” it, what does it mean to “see” it, when we can only see bits and pieces of it. When we go to new cities we climb up to high places to try to see it all at once, to take it all in as a whole; Perec goes to his café and writes the city bit by bit piece by piece. Someone on Facebook: I know this is annoyingly vague, but if any of you were planning to be mean to me this week i'd appreciate it if you'd put it off awhile. Too much bad news, sorrow, etc. This is a person who I have only ever known to be competitive and unkind. I fight the impulse to say something snarky. I board the 92.
11/20/14
Monday morning
Blue tutu Chanel bag fake lashes girl you look amazing.
11/20/14
Thursday afternoon
Taught Perec today. An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. The kids were into it. They liked thinking about how the place we look at the world from shapes the way we see it. At first they're bogged down by all the details. They've never read anything like it. They're used to stories, with plots, and characters, or textbooks. They haven't encountered writing like this, writing of the everyday, writing without an argument, writing that suggests, that counts, that tracks. Tomorrow I'll take them to Saint Sulpice and they'll do the exercise for themse
lves, and see how tough it is to notice everything, and how freeing it is to try.
The one thing they notice are the buses. Perec tracked all the buses that went through the Place Saint Sulpice those few days in 1974. I never noticed the buses so much said one student but now everywhere I go in the city I'm keeping track of them. Another was like but why does he do this, I don't understand, who does this, who reads this? I didn't know how to answer her. that book strikes me as less a means of writing for someone, and more a means of making sense of the world. Like: things are out of control. Slow down. Count the buses. Pattern the world.
11/24/14
Monday morning
That feeling in the back of my throat, like it's rusting. Crap I hope I'm not getting sick. I listen to a France Inter podcast but I'm too tired to make out the subject. Something about bees? Or abbeys.
11/24/14
Monday afternoon
Oh whoops think I was just guilty of #womanspreading: when your bag verges onto the seat next to you subtly discouraging anyone from sitting down
12/01/14
Monday morning
Neon green numbers spray painted on the pavement, number ones formed European-style with hooks, like runes. I have a bad cough. I run for the bus with a mother and her daughter. We all make it. I get something slick on my hand when I hold the bar to help me into a seat. I tell myself it's someone else's hand cream. (This is what I tell myself.) From the corner of my eye it looks like the girl next to me is knitting. I turn my head to see what and realize she's detangling her earphones. She plugs them into her ears, one by one. I plug in my own. In front of me the mother fixes her daughter's ponytail. We all cough. I lean back, and close my eyes, my blood still heavy with sleep. If I'm not careful I'll miss my stop.
12/01/14
Monday afternoon
A woman bends over to pick up a penny, that is, a centime, from the floor. A man flips a folded-up piece of pink paper back and forth. A petite woman wears an olive-green wool cape. She looks like Peter Pan. A man wears a grey puffer jacket. He looks like the Michelin Man. Brown socks silver shoes. A nun texting. There are charms dangling from her phone but I can't tell what they are. Neither is a cross. Someone offers her a seat and she doesn't take it. Some elderly people with canes get on and there is much discussion about where to seat them and who is getting off where and it is all resolved in a very fair and civilized manner. When it is my turn to get off I croak excusez-moi madame to the woman in front of me who was one of the key judges determining the previous solution. I want to be polite to her to show that I too am fair and civilized and well-brought-up. But my voice betrays me. It's rough and uncouth, the voice of fatigue and illness, the uncontrollable, the abject. I am a bit more body than mind. I walk a few paces and overtake a man with a cane. I turn the corner and stop to make these notes. As I lean and write, the man with the cane overtakes me.
12/04/14
Thursday morning
Coughing it up and nowhere to spit it. In public that is.
12/08/14
Monday morning
It's 8:30 am and there is a woman in business attire crunking on the bus. I wish I could film her but I don't want to be rude.
When my alarm went off it was pitch-black outside. What happened to daylight savings? I never remember from one year to another how dark it gets in the morning in winter. I guess we forget it, like pain. I haven't been up this early in awhile. I don't think I'll stop for coffee today. I really don't feel well. Rufus Wainwright spins out of the random selector in the jukebox in my hand, my jukebox-phone. La lune trop pale caresse l’opale de tes yeux blasés. I've never managed to get inside that song, not in those nights living at the foot of Montmartre, not in all the nights I've spent wandering the streets that trellis uphill, maybe once or twice I came close in the bar at the top of the stairs the one with all the black and white photographs glued to the exposed beams in the ceiling. I step off the bus and the air is gentle though it's cold out, it feels like it does when I get off the plane at CDG and I feel the difference in whatever it is that makes this France and I know I'm home. Bad perfume and a cigarette. Good perfume and a cigarette. Ladies you're killing me.
12/08/14
Monday afternoon
one of those winter days when everywhere smells of soup. the world is full of buses and I am always on them. the buses are starting to get to me. I have to give that talk on zadie smith and I think I'll do it on that thatcher quote what was it again? something about being a loser for taking the bus after 30 I'm 36 maggie t would have no use for me at all
12/11/14
Thursday morning
Little kids two of them staring up at the announcement board calling out all the bus times. 91! 4 minutes! 83! 6 minutes! 26! 99! 7 minutes! a hundred minutes! Impossible numbers, impossible routes mixed with actual numbers, actual routes. It's a long wait today. I look at my watch anxiously and wonder at how light the sky is. As we trail down to the end of the year I thought the dark would lengthen on both ends, morning and night. The world outside looks like it's been passed thru an Instagram filter the darks are darker the stone more wet
12/17/14
Wednesday afternoon
gave them their final exam and now I'm weighed down with little blue exam books and their final essays my bag is cutting into my shoulder but there's nowhere to sit. thank goodness the semester is over and we're going away to the jura for a long weekend, I am going to sit with the dog in front of the fireplace in our hotel and mark papers as it goes dark outside, they will bring me mugs of cocoa and glasses of wine and I won't have to run after any more buses for a while.
second semester
01/20/15
Tuesday morning
We're all thinking the same thing, it's the first day back to work since it all happened and it feels like we swallowed something down the wrong pipe and we're just starting to be able to take regular breaths again we came out of our houses ok I came out of my house and we marched in defiance but the defiance has taken a backseat to our commute as we try to get on with things even though there are seventeen fewer Parisians than there were this time last week.
01/23/15
Friday morning
What are we doing?
01/27/15
Tuesday morning
People get on and off as we wend our way. For a while there's no one across from me and I can put my feet up on the hump where the wheel is, under the seat in front of me. I take them down when someone comes. Now there are people standing in the aisle. L’heure de pointe is what they call it but there's nothing pointy about rush hour, just a press, warm people pressed against each other's bodies, like some kind of wordless woolly love-in. I guess we need each other. People are dressed too warmly for the weather. It's pretty warm for January but we're all wearing scarves and fur hats as if a Siberian wind were blowing.
#jesuischarlie giving way on twitter to #jenesuispascharlie.
01/30/15
Friday morning
I keep crying in buses
01/30/15
Friday afternoon
The driver pulls up next to a puddle. People descend in an ungainly fashion—the step is too high for most—and try not to step in it. Over to the curb is too far.
02/03/15
Tuesday morning
Girl from behind, the silhouette of the 2010s: topknot, thick scarf very thick around the neck, roomy drop-shoulder black wool coat. She is everywhere. In fact she looks like my friend H. I lean over a little to see the shoes. (I could recognize this friend by her shoes.) How funny it would be to see H on the bus on the way to work! But what would she be doing on this bus she doesn't live in the part of town where they start with nines, she's over where they start with fours. Black ankle boots, no heel. I start to say her name. But the thighs are different. Not her then
02/03/15
Tuesday afternoon
A bus that is not my bus pulls up, then pulls away. On its back is an advertisement for the tele
vision show Un village français, about the Second World War, which has just started airing its new season. Il va falloir être résistant, it says.
02/06/15
Friday morning
Sometimes I leave the house and without warning the buses aren't running. Taxi! Or no: that is a twentieth-century sound, the twentyfirst century slides silently like this: tap swipe swipe tap tap tap, and my Uber pulls up. Slow drive thru the 7th (at the rate of 2 Haussmanns per 5 minutes). Fancy locals walking their children to school. Women in black stockings and heels. Hair up. Men in suits, more rare. Money on their feet and in their hair and faces. The car stops in front of my school and I look like all the other children of the 7th arrondissement being dropped off by drivers in black cars with tinted windows.