Riding the bus workward today, listening to PJHarvey on my iPod–“Horses in My Dreams”–and I hear a horrible wailing break through my wall of sound. I turn and see, all the way at the back of the bus, a Black Lab in a harness–a blind man’s dog–howling like a wolf. Something behind the blind man catches my eye, and I refocus to see a geisha, in full drag, obi and paper umbrella and everything, running after the bus. My eyes eventually break free of this unprocessable image, and I read the Poetry on the Bus above me. Polly Jean’s lyrics and the words of the poem jangle and tangle, until suddenly they converge on a single common phrase: “. . . in my dreams.”
I hear you. Everyday life is the weirdest thing since sliced bread, and I try to do my part to make sure it stays that way - I’m occasionally an instigator of the surreal myself. I have on several occasions provided Seattle Metro riders with the experience of a fully armored and armed Imperial Stormtrooper casually hopping onto the bus, riding downtown or to the U District, and then hopping off as if it was just another day at work. 
I love this kind of thing. After you pay your fare, do you briefly scan the passengers and say “these aren’t the droids we’re looking for” and dismissively wave at the driver and say, “move along, move along”? 
Hmmm, no, but maybe I should do that next time.
A few months ago, as my roommate and I drove down Lake Shore Drive, I glimpsed an old old lady, dressed in a skimpy black bathing suit, perched on a railing and posing as if she was doing a photo shoot. This was in November. It was FREEZING, and we were on a freeway, yet she was as nonchalant as you please. Definitely warranted a double-take.
Me: -whips head around- Did you just SEE that?
Roommate: What? What?
Me: There was this old lady sitting on the railing, dressed in a bathing suit! And she was waving to people! What the fuck was that? In this weather her nipples are going to fall off.
Roommate: Really? -turns head for a second, annoyed- I didn’t see her at all!
Me: Well, she was definitely there.
Roommate: Damnit. Do you think I can make a u-turn here?
Me: -glances out window to freeway, where cars are doing 60 mph- Um, no.
I once saw a nice sofa outside on the hill under my apartment balcony. I assumed that probably somebody had put it there from one of the ground floor apartments because they were moving or giving it away. It looked weird though, so I went into the other room and got my then-boyfriend to come take a look.
When we went to the window, the sofa was gone. No people carrying it, which given the seconds that I was away from the window and the size of the sofa, I’m sure we’d have seen. No nothing.
He was like, suuurrrre there was a sofa.
Eddies … in the space-time continuum!
Ah, is he.
…
Heading up to the library double doors about two hours ago, I saw some graffiti spray-painted on the walls nearby. OK, I think, someone’s left their tag or whatever.
Nope. It reads, in small, neat, perfectly legible letters, “Read more cake”.
(It would’ve been better off nearer the fiction section, given that the cake is a lie…)
Ah, so, who needs surrealism even if you don’t have life? I’m having a hard time weighing options, here.
I suspect that the correlation of bus-riding to surreal experiences is really high…
Once I was on the bus and this old, old black guy gets on, dressed to the nines, but 1920s style, straw hat and everything, and starts going up and down the aisle shouting, “I’m Singin’ Willy! I’m Singin’ Willy! I sing you a song! Singin’ Willy!”
He got off at the next stop.
I think that surrealism is reality when you ride Greyhound. As soon as my friend sat down, the man next to him turned and began, “Back when I was bounty hunting… heh heh…” trailing off into low grumbles.
And this is his sofa, is it?
Okay, **Chorpler ** and Yllaria, is there a joke I’m not getting here?
Is this some kind of Dr. Who-type Monthy Python science fiction thing?
Seriously, I have no idea what you guys are referring to. But I bet it will crack me up when you tell me!
- it’s from Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams
I once phoned my friend, who lives in the apartment next door, and asked if he would come to the door so I could give him some flowers, as I had more then fit in my vases.
So here’s the scene, as seen by a passing pedestrian lady on our sidewalk:
-Door A opens, and a woman appears in the door.
-A second later, door B next to A opens and a guy appears. .
-The woman in door A hands a bunch of flowers to the guy in door B. Neither speaks a word.
-A second later, both go back into their houses and close their doors.
Through the closed door, I heard the lady say to her friend: “Did you see that?” and they had a conversation much like the one in HazelNutCoffee’s post.
Tom Waits doesn’t use Greyhound as often as he used to.
yeah, the Buslines of the US are a surrealistic experience, more so than the subways because you are are stuck with the perps for a loooonger time. Case in point: Trailways bus from Greeneville, SC, to Durham , NC. Me: 26, My seatmate lurched on in.
“Hell, you look like a nice gal. Do you teach school? You look like you would teach school. Lemme tell you about the time I robbed a bank in Mississippi, You might not want to listen… well, OK, then, well, me and my girlfriend kinda got roped into it…”
Long story that was pretty unbelievable, then he passed out on my shoulder. I’m an idiot softy, so just shoved him over a bit. He woke up after awhile. " Man, I wrote a country song that George Jones recorded. but he never gave me credit. "Reached on in to his backpack and pulled out a pint, gave a good gulp. We were then nearing his home of Gastonia, and he started reminiscing. Passed the Diane 29 Drive In Movie.
“Damn, that’s where I had my first love. We all did, right there. That was a fine place for getting a good kiss and something else, too, hope ya don’t mind. Shit. Goddamn. Shit. Hell, Hon, I’m gonna go back to my mama now, that’s where I’m goin’. She’s a hard sort, right on up on 80 years old now. When I go back there, I know she might beat me, but, you know, she’s my Mama, and I gotta let her do it, because I love her so.”
I watched Mr Johnny Cole get off there at the bus stop, wondering. In thinking, not so surreal as much superreal…
To expand on what Martha Medea said: there’s a scene at the beginning of the third Hitchhiker’s Guide book, Life, the Universe, and Everything, where Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are trapped in England two million years ago. Ford finds Arthur and tells him that his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic is going crazy and detecting fluctuations in the fabric of reality. Then a sofa suddenly appears in the middle of a meadow and goes bounding across the grass. They manage to leap on it and are transported to modern-day Earth, in the middle of a cricket game.
Anyway, it includes this scene (which I have edited much text out of to pare it down to size, but the original contains lots more hillarity):
My most surreal memory: One day in Bali, we saw a procession of traditionally dressed Balinese troop carrying lots of penjol, a kind of bamboo streamer. Nothing odd there; Bali is one dramatic traditional celebration after another, and you see penjol all the time.
Two things were odd, though:
-
They were walking straight into the ocean.
-
They were carrying live ducks (struggling ducks that were obviously quacking in duck-language, “lemme go, you moron!”) and plucking feathers from the ducks as they walked, flicking them (feathers, not ducks) into the air.
No one could explain that to me for years.
Finally a very knowledgeable Balinese lady told me that sounded like some ceremony she had heard of. But she may have just been trying to make me feel better.