THE MAN ON THE T RA I N
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breaks down beside a yellow cottage with a certain lobular stain
on the wall which the commuter knows as well as he knows the face
of his wife. Suppose he takes a stroll along the right-of-way while
the crew is at work. To his astonishment he hears someone speak to
him; it is a man standing on the porch of the yellow house. They
talk and the man offers to take him the rest of the way in his car.
The commuter steps into the man's back yard and enters the house.
This trivial event, which is of no significance objectively-empirically,
is of considerable significance aesthetically-existentially. A zone-cros–
sing has taken place.
It
is of extraordinary interest to the commuter
that he may step
out
of the New York Central right-of-way and into
the yellow house. It is of extraordinary interest to stand in the kitchen
and hear from the owner of the house who he is, how he came to
build the house, etc. For he, the commuter, has done the impossible:
he has stepped through the mirror into the
ens soir.
Zone-crossing is of such great moment to the alienated I because
the latter is thereby able to explore the It while at the same time re–
taining his option of non-commitment. The movie
It Happened One
Night
stumbled into this fertile field when it showed Clark and
Claudette crossing zones without a trace of involvement, from bus
to hitch-hiking to meadow to motel. It is a triumph of rotation to
be able to wander into Farmer Jones's barnyard, strike up an acquain–
tance, be taken for a human being, then pass on impassible as a ghost.
The reason the formula ran into diminishing returns was that this
particular zone-crossing created its own zone, and its imitators,
in–
stead of zone-crossing, were following a well-worn track.
A more memorable zone-crossing was Hemingway's fisherman
leaving the train in the middle of the Minnesota woods and striking
out on his own. To leave the fixed right-of-way at a random point
and enter the trackless woods is a superb rotation. Swedes know this
better than anyone else. Travelers in Sweden report two national
traits: boredom and love of the North country-alienation and
rotation. This penchant for taking to the woods reverses the objective–
empirical: when Swedish planners took note of this particular "recrea–
tional need" and provided wooded areas in the vicinity of Stockholm,
the Swedes were not interested. And it is no coincidence that when
the Swedish government did take measures to set aside the North
country for hiking, there occurred a sudden increase of Swedish
tourists in quaint out-of-the-way
English
villages.
