Petersburgian Case File #14: Like Alice in Wonderland if Lewis Carroll was tripping acid [while tripping acid] while writing it

I ventured back into the St. Petesrburg subway this weekend....why did I venture back into the St. Petersburg subway this weekend?

If only it was just carny folk!

So everything goes quite smoothly at first. Scan my card, get into the subway just fine, take a 90 minute escalator down, the train arrives within two minutes - all is good. But then there I am innocently standing on the train, minding my own business when, at the other end of the train car I see her. You may now turn on the random clip of scary music I found on youtube.

She was a woman in her 70s, maybe 80s. Her back bent forward at least a full 90 degrees, possibly even more and, slowly but surely, she hobbled her way across the car and, while doing so, never stopped - not for a single moment - shaking her head in a circle. I couldn't tell if it was disease related or religious (seemingly religious, if I had to venture a guess) but I could tell without a doubt that it was the sort of thing that haunted the nightmares of the Guillermo Del Toros and William Friedkins of this world. It was probably this strange form of street performance coupled with immense pity that caused a lot of people on the subway to give her some money. It was simultaneously fascinating and horrifying. And, comedy aside, surely there is something incredibly tragic and upsetting to be said about an elderly woman having to do something along these lines to have enough to survive. Yes I am in Petersburg and decadence can be found just about everywhere but that's definitely not the way much, much more than just the other half lives.

*sigh* Well this image isn't all too delightful anymore after that little bit now is it?

At that moment, though, such contemplative and lofty thoughts about poverty and wealth and capitalism and greed weren't in the forefront of my mind what with the slightly more urgent thought of "Dear god, she's coming this way." And, well, the thing with subway cars is that they are fairly linear in their manner of construction. So if you see a person walking from one end of it while you are at the other end it is more or less unavoidable that they would end up walking right, directly, straight at you. And so, obeying the laws of physics, she proceeded to do likewise. And I ever so calmly freaked the hell out. Now screaming, "DEAR GOD ITS THE SHEDEVIL WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" while fairly typical for a NYC subway ride would probably be less well received in St. Pete. And so instead I calmly moved aside, started staring directly at a wall, and tried to occupy myself with fun little song lyrics while willing myself not to turn around again no matter how strong the temptation. I mean it wasn't really as if I wanted to stare at this physically and/or mentally and/or religiously ill woman so much as that temptation we all get to maybe, just maybe, take a wee peek* at an eclipse when it comes around. Oh how we know we shouldn't! Oh how we, rationally, know how damaging it is to look! But the desire - the desire is certainly there.

Stupid blind lemurs - didn't construct special sunglasses for themselves to stare at the eclipse.
These are the reasons we humans are allowed to eat other animals!

When I turned around to look she was gone. Or so I thought. When I glanced over at the next car over I saw that she had entered that one and the (scroll back up and turn the music on again, damn it!) entire process began again - this time, however, moving away (mercifully moving away) rather than towards me. I began to contemplate how that might be symbolic of something or another, possibly, but then I heard my stop, shrugged, and went off to the magical world of the outskirts of St. Petersburg and its massive flea market! [See, now if I decide to actually write about the flea market next it will almost look like this was planned and not just some sort of abrupt ending to a story for which I couldn't think of a nice narrative button for. Of course then I'll have to remember to cleverly make some reference back to this story at the end of that flea market one so the whole thing comes together. Eh if worst comes to worst I suppose I can finish writing that one and then sneak in some sort of additional line into this story so then when you go back and try to find where the reference was as you missed it the first time lo and behold it shall be here! This will all probably be deleted as well so the writing as a whole seems better constructed and at least marginally less meandering....yup that sounds like a good plan Ian, a good plan, indeed.]

In my mind, I'm both George AND Lenny!

*I have defeated you, most ingenious of twitter bots!**

** If you have no idea what I am talking about and have not already completely dismissed everything I say as totally nonsensical (we'll come to that point soon enough I assure you) then I would excitingly like to turn your attention to what is without a doubt my favorite usage of twitter in the whole world. Some absolutely brilliant scholarly mind who deserves some sort of award immediately came up with a twitter account that he named Stealth Mountain. The account has but one purpose: find people who write the term "sneak peak" when they almost surely meant "sneak peek" and send them an automated message saying "I think you mean 'sneak peek'" http://twitter.com/StealthMountain - if that isn't wonderful enough in and of itself the twitter account also has a list of the responses people send him (almost all of which are some angry, confused version of "Who the hell are you? Shut the fuck up!") https://twitter.com/stealthmountain/favorites I believe accomplishing one single grand work like this is a more than productive use of one's lifetime.