Jul 6, 2009
Garches and the Angry Man
Why would a young man flip off a train full of people? Because he’s just missed that train? I doubt it. He’s walking, not running, and his gesture’s calculated.
I’m staring out the window. I see the man looking directly at me (I’m a long train with many windows at this point.) He’s flipping me the bird. *!* Time stops a half second. We’re locked in, that man, his middle finger, and I. It’s a call to action, but what can I do? The train’s pulling away.
I’m thinking I’d like to rewind the clock for this man, stop this train and whatever it represents, fix whatever‘s gotten muddled up in this poor man’s life, but all I can do is wonder: What could make a person that angry? The car glass people know about all about anger. Anger has commercial value. Take, for example, the guy who gets mad at his girlfriend, goes off fuming down the street, starts feeling overwhelmed and paf! There goes a car window. My car window, thank you. No sympathy for that guy, but I do feel for my bird man. As the train continues in the direction of Saint Lazare, I do the only thing that I can do, and the only thing I usually do on trains, I give that man and his belligerent bird a whole lot of thought.
I’m struck by the scene, this momentary slice of life that takes me so many places in the flash of a second. Was it something about the day, people moving together on a Sunday, a Sunday afternoon in winter, not too cold with a tormented sky and a streak of light across the footbridge the man’s crossing? I think of The Scream. One bird from an angry young man and I’m back in Oslo, 1981, on that coming of age voyage that I’ve come to associate with that painting. Travelling is tough on a low budget. Life is hard for most people. When someone stole the Scream recently, I felt indignant. How could someone walk off with the world’s voice of anger? How are we going to let loose now? Someone tried to reassure me, saying that Munch had made several copies of the masterpiece. I felt disillusioned. My disappointment did not stop there. Someone found the stolen Scream, but now I hear that Oslo museum has been beefed up like a fortress. Norway has lost its innocence.
My angry bird man took me many other places, but the essential question remains: what kicked off the spiral? As a wise man once said, “The answer is in the answering.” Is the contrary also true? OK, I’ll stop.
If the man looked calm as you said, he probably had no greater motivation than the guy who writes an obscenity on a wall. Some people just get a thrill out of shocking people or doing something they think will shock people. Some folks just like to flash that sign because it makes them feel superior to everyone on the train as if to say, “You are all beneath me so f#@& off.” Personally, I swear like a drunken sailor while driving because I’m in my own little car world where no one will witness my horribly immature behavior and anger of nothing of real signifance. A chance to rant and rave undetected. The bird man had to let something out obviously. He probably wasn’t even conscious what it was.