Hedonism.

Two commutes, two journal entries.

22nd of January, 2024

Peak rush hour at the 28th May metro station can have you feeling like everyone is your family.

People you just have to deal with in order to keep things peaceful and in motion. Every single day, during the hour-long window from five to six, you could swear that the entire city has congregated in this single square.

University students dash out of their classes, relieved and eager to hit Targovy Street in the central district. Breathless mothers yank their children through crowds of loitering smokers while their eager eyes are glued to the cotton candy stand. Crowds of loitering smokers huddle in sporadic groups, exhausted and clocked out from a day’s work for meagre salaries. Most poetically, everyone’s journey is about to begin through the same glass door, down the same escalator, to the same two platforms.

Honestly, anyone in their right mind would avoid this commute if they had a choice, simply because the experience is very stressful and gruelling. Crammed like sardines in a can, you shuffle single file through a series of metal detectors and ticket-scanning booths toward a one-way tunnel underground. Once in there, your best bet is to manage to get on the train, because going back up isn’t always so easy.

I’d compare the experience to quicksand. As you get swept up by the symbiotic mass of human movement, you lose a great degree of your autonomy and agency at this station. If you fight the flow, you only sink deeper and disgruntle your fellow commuters along the way. Your choices are pretty much null, apart from one single decision that lies in your control.

You either turn left or right.

The rest is decided by the masses.

This might be the closest thing to performative democracy I’ve ever seen.

Commuting from 28th May during rush hour sucks, but for me, the choice to be here today was intentional. I had several other ways I could have gone home, all of which were far more peaceful and less invasive. All it would’ve taken was a brisk walk through one of Baku’s sprawling gardens, and I was at my doorstep in half an hour, but I had one last itch I needed to satisfy before boarding the plane back to The Netherlands. It was an oddly holistic itch.

I just wanted to be inconvenienced by Baku one last time.

I didn’t want to feel like a tourist. I wanted to feel like I too was doomed to this commute. I wanted to feel etched into the tapestry of Baku’s middle-class working life. I wanted to huff and puff, mutter under my breath at the state of affairs even though I go through it every day. Despite my aching legs and a miraculous chance at finding a seat on the crowded train, I wanted to shoot up at the first opportunity to offer my spot to a child or elder. I missed the feeling of having my comforts persistently challenged and questioned.

We have a saying in my language; “itdir, amma mənim itimdir”.

It’s a dog, but it’s my dog.

I say this with great privilege and a tinge of embarrassment.

I’ve only ever grown in discomfort.

23rd of January, 2024

Heavy clouds momentarily envelop the plane like wet cotton as the wings slice through the dense grey mass that looms above for the better part of a year. The golden heat on my cheeks ceases as we plummet into a turbulent and dark silence.

A classic gesture of welcome.

An unmistakable de-ja-vu.

The plane descends through the fog to reveal a terrain so meticulous and angled, so without error, that you can’t help but recoil at the human capacity to shape the land. Meticulous parallel lines slice through monotone carpets of green. Sharp angles crop out clusters of identical towns. In the most horrific sense of the word, everything is perfectly in place.

Perfectly predictable.

After a couple of skids and bounces on the runway, a quick security check and I’m back at platform five waiting for my train. No rush, no crowd, just a whole lot of personal agency and nothing to do with it. Gazing around me, everyone is immersed in their own world. Perfectly apart, almost as if we all came with a preinstalled forcefield. Personal space. After a month of nights sleeping on floors and couches between cousins and uncles, I’d forgotten what that was.

Each individual busily tapping away at their own screen, bobbing their head to a repetitive kick in their tired ears, scheduling a dinner four months ahead on a calendar app. Nobody seems particularly thrilled to be here. Nobody seems particularly anything for that matter of fact. There’s a suffocating air of business as usual.

Quality of life and a life of quality are not the same thing, I know that now. The former to which the Netherlands is inconceivably prosperous in, no less because of its exploitative conquests around the world before backdoor weapons trading and oat milk by big pharma became the new hype. The latter? I wonder if the latter can germinate in an environment this perfect.

Hordes of fogged-over dilated pupils and dark eye bags. Five cigarettes in before midday and an eternal bothersome cough. Nauseated and hunched over the rain-battered window sill, incessantly refreshing Instagram to see if anyone else enjoyed your morning thirst trap.

“Styled by me!” the caption reads. The hoops you had to jump, the circus acts you had to contort, just to put a beat-up leather jacket on some b-list rapper and feel like the false idols in the magazines. Just for one fleeting moment to feel like you’re somebody. We don’t live to work, we work to live. Idle time is the enemy of the hustler.

If you saw me doomscrolling, you’re wrong. It was actually a performance piece on the contemporary zeitgeist. Styled by me! Produced by me!

Big things coming soon. And by big things, I mean I spent a big bag on a big bag, and Instagram is about to get the soft launch. The bag isn’t so big, but the logo is. There’s a plastic CHANEL emblem on the front so you know I’m that guy.

I’m so tired.

I miss the 28th May metro station.