The Wanderer. Success through smallness.
    Perseverance brings good fortune to the wanderer.

Changing yin at the bottom means:
If the wanderer busies himself with trivial things,
He draws down misfortune upon himself.

Changing yang at the top means:
The bird's nest burns up.
The wanderer laughs at first,
Then must needs lament and weep.
Through carelessness he loses his cow.
Misfortune.

-- I Ching, Hexagram 56

Internet says that the Greyhound to Sarasota costs 135 dollars. I kind of hoped it was cheaper but I guess it's okay. I just printed the timetable even though I still can't buy the ticket until I know that I can actually walk with this knee. I don't know what's going to happen if things don't get better, unless it's my intention to let NYC devour me alive for my money.

I am actually tired of the way money is sucked from people here in the city. It's not for the money, I'm game going for broke, I haven't been doing much else in the last years, but the ways, and the reckless lack of sense of proportion, that hurts my nerves.

In the meantime I'm on for the craiglists rideshares too (Ok, I lied in the ad, it's not that I love to drive. Unless I'm on secondary roads and I can go as slow as I want.)

I am trying a funny cream for the knee that is called "bengay", it is meant for joint inflammations and similar things and I'm trying to believe in it. Although, they should probably write on the boxes that, after you rubbed whatever with bengay and you still have some on your hand, you better not touch, you know, there. I tend to have this reflex when I'm alone in bed thinking and doing nothing, looking up at the ceiling or whatever, touching myself. Bengay sort of roasts your genitals alive if you do. I mean, it could also be pleasurable for some, but I think it's one of the classic side effects you should be warned about.

Greyhound says that there are eighteen destinations between here and Sarasota, and three transfers to make. To read the list of the city names gives me a momentary feeling of upcoming adventure, and fuzzy unreasonable expectations. But they're probably going to be all big cities taken over by cars and business, where all the good things, if any, will be hidden to someone like me. Be in the city like from behind a window. Get off the bus to pee and have coffee and get on it again, like the cliche wants.

It doesn't matter. The ways of the trip don't matter. So many things don't matter since when I left. Had I to write down a list of the things that don't matter, or matter in a very different way now, it probably would come a list as long as the list of cities touched by the greyhound bus between here and sarasota, florida in a little more than a one day ride.

-- in picture, above: a different sort of bus running through the village

Babsi today wrote about a typical milanese episode (I've lived similar episodes also in Rome, but to me this sort will always be associated with Milan, like a certain damp cold weather and the smell of monoxide).

It's the one where the ticket controllers get on a bus in a small commando team and start checking on the tickets of the passengers, behaving like bullies and blatantly treating certain categories of passengers differently from the others.
They yell, they drag around, they use the force and a whole range of intimidations, or they limit themselves to sermons about the importance of always carrying a "good ticket". When they cannot bully you and yell at you (because you're a citizen) they can always make you fell ashamed of yourself in front of everyone.
The trick always worked and will always work, because many middle-class citizens mistake their own radical fear of being put to shame in front of the others for instinctive respect of the law, although the truth probably is that they would sooner break the law if only they could resist or be indifferent to shame (cf. Kafka's Process). Or, as it is with tax cheating in this country (and a lot of other stuff), if only the crime itself wasn't considered a shame.

Pathetically incapable of professionally doing their job by politely asking for documents and writing down the tickets and normally fine the passenger, using a normal tone of voice and human decency, the milanese controllers are very often ego maniacs who just adore the tough part of their job more than anything else, and have orgasms listening to the barking sound of their voices in the silent bus.
When I was a teenager those in my category where the favorite victims of ticket controllers. Youngsters by the shabby appearance where easily the ones to be mistreated if found without a ticket. Now, only a handful of years later, it is all different. Shabby youngsters carry iPods and cell phones, and the most undesirable of all passengers, the most vulnerable is obviously the immigrant, or B-citizen, whatever you want to call it.

Babsi tells her story with her usual efficiency, and I felt I had to tell about my own by commenting to her post. I am translating here excerpts from both the sources.

Babsi:

At the bottom of the trolleybus, a boy. The boy who's turning a blind eye to them and who has a wool jacket with patches on the elbows. Ticket, they say to him. Without the "please" that was reserved to me. The boy acts dumb. Hey, the ticket, kids one. Where are you from? Egypt? And where do you get the tickets? In Egypt? The boy utters a long guttural sentence: I am sure that he is understanding and he is insulting them. Or that he is cursing. Always the same one, almost pensionable; He is looming up in front of him, standing astride at this point, and insisting: or you just thought to come to Italy to fool the Italians, eh, dark boy? "Morocco", says the boy. "Morocco, not Egypt". Resurgence of national pride. Oh, Morocco. It's the same. Here it's paying for the ticket. The second interferes: so, do you or do you not have it? He doesn't have it. I don't know why he doesn't. Because he doesn't have a buck, probably, but I lived in London washing dishes and I asked for money at the Earl's Court subway station to pay for my tickets (...)
They're back to grill the boy with the patches on the elbows. I.D., says the old one. E-D? tries to parrot the boy. Oh, when there was Mussolini the things went all right, snaps the man in uniform... I clear my throat. Excuse me? When there was - who? I surprised him. He's looking at me resentfully. Don't you get in the way, miss. I don't get in the way. I'm interested in civility and good sense. I breath in despite the fever. "Apology of fascism, you know."
Now everyone is looking at me: the moroccan boy, the woman in pink, the six controllers, the one who's yelling in the cell phone no se puede. "When there was Mussolini, gentlemen, should be taught at school - I swallow - how much this country was violent and illiberal". Silence. "Not - I swallow - on the buses." My man in uniform is outraged: on the buses, miss, one should pay the ticket! That's all! (...)
Three controllers out of six make the boy get off the bus: the rough way.

Me:

(...) I was fined plenty of times during my junior and high school years. Once I was chased down half Viale Padova by a controller, up to the inside premises of school, many times I was grabbed by the jacket, yelled on my face, carried down the 56 or the 92 or the 33, underwent the sermons I hate, I lied and gave false identities and shrugged and laughed in the face and trembled of fear and shame.
Still today that I always pay the ticket in every city of the world, when I see uniforms instinctively I shiver and look for escape routes.
Always hated controllers because of their intimidating air. Never solved the ambiguity, whether the State was always right, even when it came with the shitty face and the bullying policeman-like behavior and all the rest, or whether it was never right, because of the great lie that was held together all around.
Finally, I don't care for the apology... I find the law-enforced anti-fascism very cretin (it certainly doesn't keep people from being or becoming fascist in new and old ways), but the way I see it bullying and barking voices are more than sufficient reasons to put oneself in the way, since they represent all the possible worse, all the possible fascism to expose and impede. If only to get in the way was anything useful-- or even if it wasn't useful at all. Provided to have clear in an instant which side one is on... and instead one loses precious seconds to understand it.