21 December 2009

Indeterminacy on the Underground

There's a point (well, really a stretch) on the Piccadilly Line going South in which it is impossible to tell who is coming or going.

If you take the train bound for "Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3, & 4," you'll eventually reach all of them, but not before stopping at Terminal 4 for "up to 8 minutes." It is between terminal 4 & the stop leading to the rest that your existence as a traveler becomes entirely indeterminate (whether coming or going, no one is without baggage).

A woman asked me, "Been anywhere exciting?" (She'd been to a peace conference in Jordan.) I responded, "I'm going somewhere exciting, hopefully."

Though in my haste to respond I chose the obvious, I could have answered anything. If I were willing to give up the pretense of having more important things to do, I think that I'd be inclined to inhabit this apparent anomaly, and perhaps spin a few tales. I'd be neither coming, nor going, but could pretend all the same.

Is this stretch of ten minutes or so along the tracks not a dramatization of our everyday existence?

So much about public transport seems to be just that.

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