is only looking at it because it holds his attention magnetically. What might lie behind it is of no more importance than what or who might happen, for example, to be behind him, just at that moment.
The panel is more like a mirror, reflecting something about himself. It could be the door of a tomb, rudely chiseled into the wall of a cave and sealed with excessive measures, as if being dead weren’t enough, one also had to be imprisoned. At the same time, the panel is obviously the work of some impersonal city agency, one job among many done by one functionary among many, so that the work and its purpose, the one who directs the act and the one who carries it out, are not united in one place and time. The panel is at least as real as he is. But it may be that its reality is bestowed on it by his attention.
X. glances at the people standing to either side of him on the crowded platform. They are all facing the wall, and all of them are reading. The distant train, which hoots once down the tunnel as it comes, presses dank, cemetery air before it, stirring the white leaves of the books. It’s the end of the working day, and they are all presumably going home. His physical stamina, thanks to the Gurdjieff Exercises, is excellent, and his body is neither especially lively nor particularly tired. His mind, however, feels like a piece of fabric that has been stretched out of shape, and his thoughts are lifeless and subdued. The day of work just completed was long and filled with effort, but, even though he is all too sensible of the fatigue it left behind in him, it nevertheless seems in hindsight as though it had flashed by in an instant.
A booming voice comes over the public address system, at once loud and unintelligible. The announcement goes on and on, with every now and then a word poking up into near comprehensibility through the wash of sound like a figure under a blanket, until it becomes a kind of oppressive smoke hanging under the ceiling. The less attentively he listens, the more plainly he can make out what is being said:
“The purpose of these announcements is not to impart information, but to prevent aesthetic impressions from taking form by impairing your ability to concentrate and by forcing you to seal yourself off from outward sensation, so as to make you unreceptive to mood, thereby relentlessly dragging you back to the idiotic, abbreviated world that must continue to confine you . . .”
People continue to pour onto the platform from the enormous stairway that opens, like a chute, at one end. As they continue to stream past him, one after another, steadily streaming past him, piling into that station, endlessly piling in and piling in, a feeling of horror begins to stir in him. It doesn’t matter if the train comes. However many may board it here, they will be instantly replaced, and then some. What grips him is nothing other than the streaming of these people, that there is no end to it.
The train glides into the station. The doors part like buttocks. He enters with relief, and goes to the spot prepared for him. Once again, briefly, he fixes his gaze on the panel in the wall, which is still visible through the window. While he stood on the platform, he looked at it passively, but, this time, he seeks it out and takes hold of it with his mind, perhaps with the confused idea that he might be able to collect from it some of the sense of his own reality with which he had imbued it. The train croons and the panel slides away into a purple shadow.
He observes the other passengers as they appear reflected in the black windows. Looking at them, it would be easy to get the impression that groping vacuously in bags and purses was the sole purpose for their existence. Many of them are slumped in sleep, while others, holding up their books or newspapers, dart suspicious glances this way and that; they are really reading the train and the passengers.
After another stop, he takes an open seat and tries, without
The panel is more like a mirror, reflecting something about himself. It could be the door of a tomb, rudely chiseled into the wall of a cave and sealed with excessive measures, as if being dead weren’t enough, one also had to be imprisoned. At the same time, the panel is obviously the work of some impersonal city agency, one job among many done by one functionary among many, so that the work and its purpose, the one who directs the act and the one who carries it out, are not united in one place and time. The panel is at least as real as he is. But it may be that its reality is bestowed on it by his attention.
X. glances at the people standing to either side of him on the crowded platform. They are all facing the wall, and all of them are reading. The distant train, which hoots once down the tunnel as it comes, presses dank, cemetery air before it, stirring the white leaves of the books. It’s the end of the working day, and they are all presumably going home. His physical stamina, thanks to the Gurdjieff Exercises, is excellent, and his body is neither especially lively nor particularly tired. His mind, however, feels like a piece of fabric that has been stretched out of shape, and his thoughts are lifeless and subdued. The day of work just completed was long and filled with effort, but, even though he is all too sensible of the fatigue it left behind in him, it nevertheless seems in hindsight as though it had flashed by in an instant.
A booming voice comes over the public address system, at once loud and unintelligible. The announcement goes on and on, with every now and then a word poking up into near comprehensibility through the wash of sound like a figure under a blanket, until it becomes a kind of oppressive smoke hanging under the ceiling. The less attentively he listens, the more plainly he can make out what is being said:
“The purpose of these announcements is not to impart information, but to prevent aesthetic impressions from taking form by impairing your ability to concentrate and by forcing you to seal yourself off from outward sensation, so as to make you unreceptive to mood, thereby relentlessly dragging you back to the idiotic, abbreviated world that must continue to confine you . . .”
People continue to pour onto the platform from the enormous stairway that opens, like a chute, at one end. As they continue to stream past him, one after another, steadily streaming past him, piling into that station, endlessly piling in and piling in, a feeling of horror begins to stir in him. It doesn’t matter if the train comes. However many may board it here, they will be instantly replaced, and then some. What grips him is nothing other than the streaming of these people, that there is no end to it.
The train glides into the station. The doors part like buttocks. He enters with relief, and goes to the spot prepared for him. Once again, briefly, he fixes his gaze on the panel in the wall, which is still visible through the window. While he stood on the platform, he looked at it passively, but, this time, he seeks it out and takes hold of it with his mind, perhaps with the confused idea that he might be able to collect from it some of the sense of his own reality with which he had imbued it. The train croons and the panel slides away into a purple shadow.
He observes the other passengers as they appear reflected in the black windows. Looking at them, it would be easy to get the impression that groping vacuously in bags and purses was the sole purpose for their existence. Many of them are slumped in sleep, while others, holding up their books or newspapers, dart suspicious glances this way and that; they are really reading the train and the passengers.
After another stop, he takes an open seat and tries, without
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