Well, I'm afraid it will take a while. A long while. Sorry, I can't help it. This is not an express coach. This is a very lazy coach. A snail coach. A tortoise coach. Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but definitely this is not a hare coach. This is just a bus. If you are going to be disappointed, it's better to be disappointed positively than to be disappointed negatively. A coach is a coach – a bus is a bus – it's stupid to expect it will be rapid as an arrow or as a bullet or as a rocket or as a blizzard smudging the view outside, transforming it into a motley stripe with no recognisable details thus giving us no chance to define, even approximately, what landscape we are going through, what land it is ...... There's no need to rush, there's no need for speed – there are no windows, so there's no view to be smudged and the pace of travelling is not the point. The only window is your imagination. As usually. You can imagine this bus as more colourful than the most colourful butterfly, that it is painted in the most fancy and frenzied way, orgiastically, decorated with a host of fluttering flags, covered with numberless chrome elements of unknown and top secret function even for their producer ..... I'm lying – their function is to bewilder and take aback and shock other vehicles to make them feel worse, weaker, neglected, unimportant and to slow down and give way ...... You can imagine this bus as a golden cigar, a torpedo, well, just any way, however it is good to remember that a bus is a bus, it must have wheels, it can't speed hovering overground because then it won't be a bus ..... OK. Imagine anything. Whatever you imagine, you won't be going fast. You will be transported slowly. This is the nature of a bus, of this one too, although it should be considered a ghost bus.
You are going. You have got in and now you are going. Certainly you would like to know where you are going. The majority of passengers usually go somewhere – only a few usually go nowhere, or they go where the bus goes to and usually it is perfectly indifferent to them where it is... Anyway, I assume you belong to this overwhelming majority and you would like to know where you are going to and whether you reach the place of destiny. Also this bus would like to know where it is going. But most probably it knows. Most probably the bus is not taking this route for the first time – it seems to be a kind of regular itinerary. However it is also very probable the bus is going this way for the first time – it has chosen this route because you have chosen it. You have chosen this bus and this route. Yes, obviously, there was no other bus when you came, or maybe you just didn't notice other coaches, but you could, as well, not get in, and if you didn't get in you wouldn't be going the way you are going. Of course, if you came here a bit earlier or a bit later another bus would be waiting for you, but you came when you came and it makes very little sense, if any, to analyse what would happen if you had come earlier or later. Or if you hadn't come at all. Or you had come and decided not to travel by such a junk – the noise of rusty metal sheets and creaking of seats would drive you mad. No matter what the bus was like, one thing was deadly sure: no video films would be shown. This bus, like any other bus here, is not a mobile cinema – it is, or it can be (you must be lucky), a mobile library, which should be expected. And if it is (or can be – you must be lucky) a ghost bus, then a library in it will be a ghost library. And if it is a ghost library, then the books collected in it will be ghost books. And if you are really lucky, you will find there a book written by Słowadar Noskiwakow, never published, of forgotten title, existing probably only in one copy, although this is not sure since it is the typescript, rather a copy of it, second or third, well legible what means he used a carbon paper of good quality and hit the keys of his old type-writer strongly what a pity there are no dynamic keyboards which would give a chance to get more or less bold letters depending on how strongly you hit the keys – well, with no doubt I mentioned this idea somewhere, but this idea should be presented and promoted ceaselessly – if one day a keyboard factory is build in Liberland, with no doubt this kind of keyboard will be produced there, only this kind. But, does the titleless work deserve to be called a book, if it has never been a book? Will intentions suffice? Let's take it easy. Don't bother about it. And remember it. Solving this problem can be very useful in further journey...
The coach was worse than usually, with no “super-de-lux” notice on both sides. The sun setting down slowly was heating the windows, flood of shimmering and glow, seats' plastic upholstery was sticking to passengers' backs and thighs. Old men with silvery stubble beards rustling when rubbed with their gnarled fingers, with countenances like raw and rough, too black woodcuts, were sitting everywhere beside windows and didn't allow to open them even slightly. They stayed in frowsty air thick of dust which penetrated the coach through cracks and slits and created delicate mist in the aisle and among the seats... The passengers seemed to be worse too – darker, poorer, dirtier, or maybe seen through the veil of dust they only looked so.
A desert road... What can be written about a road running straight through the desert? About tens of kilometres taken in monotonous throbbing and hum, with no bends and winding, so fast, very fast? Terrific emptiness all around, awesome and incredible, full of setting sun redness, full of navy blue, very dark blue sky, full of huge full moon rolling shockingly low, almost touching the ground; colossally vast carpet of sand decorated with regularly scattered tufts of dried grassy vegetation. Sometimes a village made of clay, sometimes a herd of black goats, sometimes hillocky camels were crawling through the windows – in such moments P. used to begin his epileptic dance with camera, always not ready on time, always late, always disappointed. Then mountains were ragging their tops, peaks and summits, breaking into sharp rocks pricking eyes, stabbing the black sky – like a fancy paper cut lace... They stopped in a desert inn. An oblong building on one side of the road; they were eating plain rice, three times more expensive, and drinking tea, talking with a young guy who was also going to Zahedan and later helped them to find nice accommodation. On the other side of the road there was nothing; a huge nothing was spreading endlessly, having no boundary over there, grey at the bottom, black at the top, stained with silver. What a strange feeling – to touch the monstrous emptiness. You think everywhere is full of something, that something is everywhere, while suddenly you find yourself in a place where there is nothing. It's so confusing, it seems so impossible, the existence of such motionlessness, such dead silence. Because emptiness is when there is total motionlessness, stillness... They urinated at this dumb, deaf, blind nothing, grey at the bottom and black at the top, spreading around endlessly in the sultry air... Frightened and scared they got into the bus and continued the journey taking the road now bumpy and winding. The radio kept howling silently, beautifully, hoarsely. The drivers replaced one another without pulling down the bus... Is emptiness a loneliness? What is it, loneliness? What is the point of loneliness? Does it mean to have in oneself whole world, the sky, green trees and grass, white whirling clouds, all the people trotting to and fro ceaselessly? How can one be lonesome having everything inside oneself?... How can you learn it? Or maybe it has no sense to learn. Maybe it has to be the way it is if it is so?....
A stop. Just a stop.... What a stop! Nothing special. Just a short break for pissing. That's all. Nothing more... But what a pissing it was! Pissing at THE ABSOLUTE. Pissing into THE ABSOLUTE... PISSING and ABSOLUTE... Or the wholeness. Just right. Pure abstraction and pure concrete. Mystical ecstasy of highest quality and complete physiological satisfaction. Spirit and matter. Mind and flesh. Oh and phew. All physicality of metaphysics... And everything as easy and natural as breathing – with neither pathos nor dramatic gestures, with no routine.... Somebody could exclaim: that's the essence of zen! And he or she would be wrong profoundly. Because there was absolutely no zen, nor anything like or unlike zen. Zen was there absolutely not needed and not necessary. The tiniest bit of zen would only spoil everything. And something like that happened almost in the beginning of their journey – they experienced something so unusual almost at the start. They could have stopped and didn't go further. What were they to continue their journey for? They already reached their destination. Nothing more fabulous could they experience. But probably, almost undoubtedly, they didn't know about it, they not aware of it. Then they didn't know. They learned it later. Much later. Too late. And not all of them.... And besides: how could they interrupt their trip? How? It's not easy.
Although such a rare event took place (yes, rare, although chances are to have it every day or even every hour) this journey described by Noskiwakow did not differ much from any other journeys of that kind. It was not an expedition through the virgin ice lands of Arctica, nor through virgin sand lands of Sahara. Nor it was a luxurious excursion on board of fully air conditioned ocean liner perfectly comfortable. It could be a bit more crazy than a lot of other trips of that kind, however it won't be that easy to indicate why it was so, and especially why there was more madness it this very journey than in other journeys of that kind – of what kind? one should ask in this very moment – and one should answer: of initiation kind. Two friends, one day in the second half of the past century, start on a journey from one exotic country, which seems for them not exotic at all since they had been born in it and had been living in it for more than twenty years so far, to another exotic country which seems so exotic to them because they have never been in it, and it is so many times bigger, older and hotter, and everything in it is different – so they started on a journey having money for one way only.... Just in the beginning they met the third bum, who had already paid for his return ticket but that didn't make him to differ much of course the big exotic country is not at all exotic for the people who were born in it, although even for them this is really a huge country ...... Yes, it's hard to imagine, but every travel by any bus or coach, can be an initiation trip and bring a traveller to a land more exotic than dreams. Provided that there will be stops like the one described in the excerpt presented above....
As for bus stops – it should be considered carefully where to locate them. And whether they are needed; we can presume a bus will stop on demand only: do you want to get off just here? no problem, we slow down and you can jump out; we can assume also a bus is not going to pull over and you jump out on the run... Different things can be assumed – what can be chosen? Well, what should be chosen? Definitely, we need to stop for a while and analyse the problem thoroughly. It doesn't happen so often that THE ABSOLUTE has just stopped for a short rest on the other side of the road.
So, it is not good to reject at this stage the idea: the BUS is chasing the ABSOLUTE. It is going and looking around carefully. When it spots the absolute, then it stops, announcing nothing. You, as a passenger, you must be ready to get off in any moment. But to get off is not enough. You have to notice the absolute... Oh, everything is so very complicated and it is rather clear there will be not many passengers and the bus company will bankrupt quite quickly. Unless a clever camouflage will be used – the vehicles won't be white with big AHA!B sign on both boards, they will look normally whatever this notion might mean.
By the way, it is quite interesting if there is a desert in Liberland, and if so – where is it, and is it vast or small? This doesn't mean at all a desert is not a necessary condition to encounter the Absolute. Absolutes can be different, too. Some like deserts, the others prefer jungles. This does not mean either, the Absolute is emptiness, or Absolutes populate densely desolated areas. Nor they are endemic forms. Probably they can be met in letters. Probably most willingly they spend time within O, nobody knows why, although it happens they chose b. Such an absolute b can be easily recognised because it lies supine and imitates a snail – and it thinks it is a really really nice design of a bus stop....
