the passenger

And this is for Babloo, my youngest and all-time-favourite uncle-cousin-brother, who always complains that he can’t read my blog and who will hopefully come to meet us on Christmas.

As you all know… I am currently working for Cirque du Soleil, the most famous artist circus from Canada, which is situated in Zürich, Switzerland right now. Therefore I am living at home with mum again, just at the river Rhine, the border to Switzerland. I take the train to Zürich every day, which takes me a little more than an hour, all together. It’s okay, some of my colleagues who come from somewhere else withIN Switzerland, even within Zürich need even more time to get to work.

And I enjoy that time, especially at night, when I go home. I have to wait at Zürich main station for 45 minutes until 23:36, which is my most favourite time of the day. I love stations, airports and places like that, where many people come together for a short while, while they are moving on somewhere else, where people pass by randomly. Where stories and histories get mixed up. There I sit and watch.

The world is theatre, live is a stage. And here is where the stories come together, where the plot loses its sense. There I sit and watch and enjoy being part of that big scene, being actor, director and spectator at the same time.

Sometimes it happens that you meet other spectator-actors (not everybody realizes that he/she is director as well).

Like Thomas.

It was a Friday or Saturday (the spectacle’s even more absurd, exciting and funny on weekends) and Thomas was sitting close to me, watching the same world from different eyes. There were some drunk guys in front of us, who tried to smash an umbrella.

Beautiful, I thought. “Terrible” he said. And “beautiful!” I answered. That’s how we started talking about it. IT.

Beautiful? You think this is beautiful?

Yes. It IS, so it’s beautiful. It’s part of IT. Life is theater.

All just a play?

Well, yes… just a play, just a game. And it’s fun. Mostly…

So you enjoy this?

Sure. Don’t you?

No. It doesn’t give me anything. I am out of it, not inside. I tried to get in contact with it, get into it, but it’s closed. It doesn’t give me anything, no one gives me anything, I have to take, whatever I need.

I offered him a brezel (I always have brezels in my bag, when I go home, because they are left over from cirque and I just wait for someone to share them with) and said that you have to pick the apple from the tree yourself, but still be grateful to the tree, because it’s giving it to you. He understood.

I recognized him as one of us, who is just not able to recognize others as well. I also realized that I couldn’t do more for him, to change his pessimistic worldview, but when I left for my train I saw he was smiling and I was smiling as well…

I am the passenger.

I look through my window so bright
I see the stars come out tonight
I see the bright and hollow sky
Over the city’s ripped backsides
And everything looks good tonight

All of it was made for you and me
‘Cause it just belongs to you and me
So let’s take a ride and see what’s mine
Singing la la la la.. lala la la

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~ by Nadia Shakti Kumar on 14/10/2010.