literature

Black Cabs and Scepticism

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Literature Text

She flags one down at last, teetering precariously on the pavement with one cold hand wrapped weakly round an iron lamp-post. {She'd looked up at it earlier, smiled in affection at memories of searching for a boy in Kensington gardens, the one no-one could ever find. Everyone knows which boy that is. He's been here before, she bets herself. Perched on the lamp post for a second in tangled-up longing for Wendy. Will he, won't he... And of course, he won't.}

But at last there's a cab, after all that frantic waving.

Brakes whine softly, more a clearing of a throat than a declaration of presence, and she climbs in. Drenched from head to toe, the biro-on-discarded-receipt-masterpiece-map in her breast-pocket bled into Chinese watercolour. She just laughed. It didn't really matter.

She gives the address to the amiable-enough cabbie, then settles back with a sigh to watch the amber lights flash like fireflies through the night, and fancies they were fairies in past life. {Tinkerbell, whispers the part of her that never stopped believing after the boy asked her to. She indulges it.}

"You from roundabouts?" Oh, one who makes conversation. He tilts his head back to grin at her. There's no threat in it, she can tell, so she smiles back.

"No, I go to uni the other side of London. I'm visiting a friend."

The answer seems to satisfy him; he raises his eyebrows in a fatherly way and faux-admonishes "And what the 'ell were you doing out in this weather to get soaking? I 'aven't seen anyone out in this. I've 'ad trouble getting a fare, I can tell you! I was right pleased to clock you! Thought I'd be doing bad business this evenin' ...Shopping, were you?"

His manner of speaking is comforting in its familiarity. Typical London cabbie. "Not exactly. I was in the Park this afternoon... I got caught right in the middle when it started raining. Had to walk a long time just to get to a road then to find a taxi. Yeah, I'm soaked."

She is. Her hair's nearly plastered to her scalp, but she doesn't really care about that either. It's far warmer in here.

"Ah, right."

They drive on in companionable silence for a while, which suits them both. She feels heavy and sleepy, like all the bubbles in her stomach have been burst, leaving quiet behind, but it's not unpleasant.

"What you studying at uni, then?" He pipes up suddenly. She glances up at the rear-view mirror; he does seem interested. A genuinely nice bloke.

"Philosophy."

She's so proud she can say that, finally. A philosophy student. She really was one, all along, but now the world has to acknowledge it. It's delightful. She has to stop revelling in this, eventually. {But not yet.}

He laughs. "Never could abide the subject myself. No offence, love. But, come on! We're here, an' to me, no offence, really!- but that's all there is to it. Does my 'ead in, all this to-ing and fro-ing. Seems to me there comes a point when we 'ave to stop. At the end of the day, what's it all for?"

One of those, then. Well, the world needed practical people, she'd be the first to admit that. We couldn't all be Seneca's, Nietzsche's and Montaigne's. She certainly wasn't. {At least, not yet, she told her objecting ego. Not yet.}

"Philosophy, to me, is about everything. I think it all comes back to philosophy, in the end. We can... open our minds till we look at things in a different way from how we naturally perceive it. It teaches us everything. It's man's nature, I think, to question what he sees. If we can see beyond that, what does that make us? If we question everything, what are we left with?"

The philosopher leans forward, earnestly; galaxies and untameable truths shining out of her dark eyes. Her tongue was baptised in cool, silver reason, and her bones have realisation deep within their animalistic marrow.

Somehow, this has rubbed him up the wrong way entirely. She watches him in dismay as the fervour of true British blokeness - there's no other word - rises up.

"Ah!" says the cab-driver savagely. "People can say many things, but we know who we are!"

There's an awkward pause after this, as she wonders whether he even understands the meaning of the words.

The philosopher is silent and fidgets with her hair for the rest of the journey, which he seems to welcome. But as she hands over the fare she leans forward and whispers.

"The thing is, though; what if we don't?"

And finally she slips out, out, out into the cold night and forgets everything, leaving questions unanswered in a stagnated mind.

What if we don't?
I don't know what to put here. [link] I love London more than life itself.

:bulletblack:Partly based on an article I read where a man is talking to his father. He asks him whether he was offended by things the media had been saying about their part of the country; and was amazed by his father's inspired answer. "People can say many things, but we know who we are!"

...Now, am I the only one who thinks that's rot? Maybe I'm taking this the wrong way. But I am a philosopher. We don't know what the hell we are, so let's welcome it.

:bulletblack:Who knows who the little boy mentioned was? {I love him too much. Whenever I think of London, he features somewhere.}

:bulletblack:The word fervour dedicated here to ~Silent-Lulliby.

I need a new name for this piece. Suggestions are craved desperately. Tell me what you think of the crap that is my writing.
© 2011 - 2024 CityLightning
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Cloud-of-stars's avatar
I never told you this, but the first time i read it (not on dA, I didn't know it was on dA... I read it on someone's blackberry) I couldn't stop thinking about it for ages... it was lovely to read... I practically ate the words haha ^^;
sorry I never said all that, I just didn't remember that for ages, well, until now when I was trying to think where I'd seen it before ^.^