A Taxi Ride

From today

I get into a taxi and say “Hello.”

The driver, a woman, says “Hi,” makes a short pause, and continues:

— I’m sorry, can I just say something? I can’t hold it in.

— Did I slam the door too hard?

— No, no. You just look exactly like my grandfather. He had the same kind of jacket, the same kind of pants and shoes… all of which he got in Czechoslovakia. I mean, I get that it’s a style, it’s just funny how things repeat themselves.

I laugh:

— I wouldn’t mind if it was just fashion that went in cycles. The Iron Curtain seems to be coming back too.

— Right. They’re going to claw off the Eastern part of Ukraine and then close everything up.

— That’s a definite possibility.

— Or the aliens will land and none of this will be relevant.

— The funny thing is, that’s also a possibility.

This starts a conversation about the nature of reality—my favorite kind of taxi driver small talk. (I wrote about another exchange in this genre three years ago.)

She says:

— Listen, I’m ready for anything now. After Covid, after this spectacle we’re seeing on the stage that we call Ukraine…

She mentions The Black Mirror episode about a mean cartoon rabbit turned a popular politician—a character inspired by Boris Johnson, but often talked about as a premonition of Donald Trump. To my taxi driver, the closest real-world analogy to the character, Waldo, is Vladimir Zelensky—a sketch comedian who played an unlikely president in a sitcom before becoming an unlikely president in real life.

I describe a clip I recently saw: it’s the 2014 New Year celebration (that’s three months before the annexation of Crimea) on Russian TV, and the party is hosted by two comedians, Vladimir Zelensky and Maxim Galkin (today, a rare celebrity of his calibre to speak out against the war—after moving to Israel). They sing and dance.

Sitting at a table in the audience is Vladimir Solovyev, one of the top propagandists of Putin’s regime. He makes a toast, wishing the viewers that, in the new year, politicians remember that they’re servants of the people, not masters; and that they get their conscience back.

Servant of the People, of course, is the name of Zelensky’s 2015 sitcom (available on Netflix)—and later, the name of his political party.

I conclude, “It’s like we live in a bad joke.”

The driver says, “We live in a simulation. You may say that I’m crazy. I really do not believe that this world is real.”

I shrug:

— I don’t disagree. I don’t have a solid theory of what reality is, but this, — I gesture towards the window — I’m not buying it either.

— I do have a theory. I think we’re characters in a computer game, and sometimes we’re left to our own devices, while at other times the player takes control and makes us do what they want. You must have had this experience too—you’re doing something dumb, and you know that it’s dumb, and yet you keep going. I take it as proof. Have you ever played Sims?

— The first part, like 20 years ago.

— Try the latest. You’ll learn a lot about life.

I smile and think for a moment.

— Do you try to increase the degree of your control?

— Well, I’ve been using a new tool that seems to be working… Or at least, it makes the feeling that the world is not real more pronounced.

Most conversations of this sort get to this point sooner or later: an ad for some teaching or guru inserts itself in it. In my driver’s case, it’s Advaita Vedanta as taught by Robert Adams. I haven’t heard of him before, and she tells me to check out some of his stuff on Youtube.

She even has a bit of a tagline:

— What I’m looking for—what I think you’re looking for too—is a Logout button.

— I wouldn’t put it quite that way.

— You are not as tired of being stuck in a loop then. Most computer games have limited space for roaming. I’m stuck in this location called Zelenograd, and I just can’t get out. It’s a money question. “Not enough gold.”

Zelenograd is my hometown. I got out in my early 20s. I then “got out” of many other places, careers, relationships. It is a good feeling.

Lately, though, I’ve been in a kind of a loop of getting out: in the last six months, I’ve crossed the Russian border four times, lived in five different apartments and one guest house, and am currently doing the paperwork to leave Russia again and not have to return.

We arrive at the train station.

The driver concludes our chat: “Well… Good luck.”

I say, “Good luck to you too. I hope you get out of your loop.”

Because the car is not moving, she is now able, for the first time, to turn her head and look me in the eyes.

We smile at each other, and I get out of the car.

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