Skip to main content

‘Call Me George’

Image
By

You know you’ve failed to adjust to a place when you start viewing daily trifles as culturally anomalous.


Riding the bus from Freedom Square to the university on Chavchavadze Avenue: a trip of a few kilometers.  Easy enough.

But at each stop the denizens pile themselves in.  Stop after stop, a distressing number of people are insisting on getting on the No. 140.  At one point the doors cannot be shut.  The driver shouts testily, “There's another bus coming, eh!  Why don’t you wait for it?”

It doesn’t work.  More people get on.  Strap-hanging, I can no longer move.  Stuck between university students and a couple of older guys, I realize that I no longer have to hold on.  Jolts from the road or otherwise, I’m not going anywhere.

We arrive at my stop.  “Excuse me,” I say.

No one looks at me, no one moves.  I can see the light pouring in from the door.  Fresh air and personal space.  I gently nudge those unresponsive ones around me to show that I need to alight.

A second Excuse me, this time louder.  No response.  A third.  Nothing.  The doors are closing. . .

I start shoving.

“vai me!” say the ladies.  “Woe is me” or “Oh my”, and, in this instance, “How dare you push me, you insolent brute!”  vai me!

The men are no better.  “bich’o, ra iq’o!” one says as I step on his toes — Man, what are you doing? and/or Can’t you just wait till the next stop?  I’ve interrupted his mobile “thinking” session, his birzha in transit.

I’ve climbed over four people and I’m still not there.

More Woe is me’s.  More What are you doing, Man’s.  Visibly distressed, nearly frothing at the mouth, I’m looking every inch the part of the typical Westerner, always in a hurry.

Then, blinding sunlight.  Free at last!  But I’m furious.  I spit in disgust.  I kick some wooden planks under some scaffolding.  I swear up and down that I have to get out of this place.

Tbilisi, you win.  You can have the bus; I’m getting off.

Select Enlightenment:
M. Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (NY: Harper & Row, 1984).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beijing The Behemoth

By
Beijing the behemoth. At the airport I’m beat from being up some thirty-odd hours, but too sentient to think of sleep, the hotel be damned. Throw me instead into this sea of concrete, bemused smiles and unabashed stares. In the taxi with Chris, the school’s recruiter, Iphigenia and I watch the towers of concrete repeat themselves for miles. I command myself to take in every detail, no matter how small. But I’m fading fast and when the city center at last comes into view, she’s too late. The fatigue has unfortunately set in and I can’t make out much but the obvious: taxis, bicycles, rickshaws. . . . And so the hotel it is for us, because anyway I’m just too damn worked up. I don’t have a map, I don’t speak Mandarin, I haven’t changed any money yet. I promise myself a good random stroll the next morning, one which will enlighten me as to the way of the street, the dao of the hú tòng.  But the morrow brings nothing so edifying. Only a short walk with killjoy Chris, who clams
Post a Comment
Read more

Portland Flashback

By
“Put this under your tongue,” Josh said, handing me three small circles of thin white paper. The club’s owner, a dubious character, not because of his whittled-away teeth or the stringy, wet hair plastered to the sides of his head, but because of the sheen over his dark pupils, had offered the goods to Josh. I hesitated, but then this sickly looking man gave me a friendly salute. And so, already three sheets to the wind, I placed not one but all three under my tongue. They were tasteless and dissolved in seconds. While I waited for the fun to kick in I scanned the room. Halloween: goth kids dressed up as vampires. Or — wait a minute — were they vampires disguised as humans? The room was changing. I looked over at Josh to make sure he was still there. The pudgy motherfucker, with a serene grin on his face, was lost in the screeching music. All of a sudden I caught the hungry gaze of a vampire, its eyes comically wide open. Don’t look at me! Averting my eyes I watched as the wal
Post a Comment
Read more

‘ho, vitsi’

By
When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can find their own way.  — Tao Te Ching , chap.  65, v.  2, ll.  4–7 Teaching English was a good way for me to earn extra cash in my spare time in Tbilisi. Passionate and eager students of all ages would get in touch each month to seek my infinitely vast and untapped knowledge of The Bard’s tongue. But surprisingly, all of my students secretly turned out to be know-it-alls, often having a grasp of English far beyond mine. During our lessons they would indicate such knowledge in Georgian by saying ‘ ho, vitsi ,’ which means ‘yes, I know.’ Now, this may sound harmless enough, but let me tell you why I often had to fight off the urge to reach across the desk and administer a swift smack upside the head as if it were 1805. Ho, vitsi ’s literal translation does not convey the meaning in its truest sense. In particular the non-v
Post a Comment
Read more