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November 30, 2005
Conversation on a Bus
Crouch End Hill
Hannay Lane
Vicarage Path
Crouch Hill
Stroud Green Road
Craving for rectitude (too many winding paths)
Straight over the Hog's Back and on to Finsbury Park.
Three women at the bus station: one frets into a phone:
"Isn"t Amanda there?...No, cos we had a huge row:
"she chucked me out of the car in the middle of nowhere.
"I'm sure she'll try to blacken my name with Amanda,
"that's why I want to tell her. Shall I tell you what happened?"
– but I never hear; while the second woman is transfixed by his gaze
the third asks about the child and we talk
about sleeplessness, wonderment and then about colic
(that transcendental cipher for noumenal upheavals,
quasimedical sop for those who feel they must know.)
She asks what I do: I tell her
it starts to rain: the bus comes.
She considers herself a Marxist but also knows Lacan.
I try to explain the fundaments of set theory
and how truth is not the same thing as knowledge.
Fair enough, but she's no time for Mao.
It's her stop. "Read Badiou", say I;
She promises, but: "I am a union official:
there is no theoretical underpinning to our work."
It could only happen at Finsbury Park.
Il n'y a rien que la coincidence*
[*Cartier-Bresson]
Posted by robin and donald at November 30, 2005 09:00 PM