In Commute, the Journey is What Remains
“This is a magical place,” I told my boyfriend upon my first ride on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. “I feel like I’m at Disneyland.”
“This is not Disneyland,” they, a Bay Area native, replied. “Watch your purse.”
In thisisstar’s Commute, we find our protagonist reminiscing upon the great, infamous majesty of San Francisco’s public transportation system.
“When I first moved to the city I found you so charming,” the first line of the Bitsy game reads as simple pixel fog strolls alongside a window-view of the Golden Gate Bridge. “Whisking me around, with your bright paper transfers.”
I felt much the same the first time I witnessed the BART in the cylindrical metal flesh. Coming from the car-haven of the midwest and, in the queerest of queer stereotypes, not possessing a driver’s license, the idea of being spirited across a massive metropolis in an hour or so was an intoxicating prospect. It brought me great joy to sit and stare out the window at the carlogged city, soaring above and below its congested streets. There was no end to my fascination with the brick stations and pitch tunnels, the scrappy trainside trees and the telephone poles whizzing past.
“I loved your darkness,” Commute says, with a tone reserved for true loves lost. Sighing, “You were like family.” And, “It’s been more than a decade. I haven’t seen you in years.”
Commute uses the simple inputs of the Bitsy game engine to create a rhythmic, ceaseless push. With every press of the right arrow key the landscape beyond the window moves with a rush of Victorian houses. A dot moves from station to station on a map. A train pulls in front of you, welcoming you aboard for yet another day. A day turns into days. Weeks are marked off a calendar. Time is constantly moving in Commute, ushered on by your own ceaseless button press. You’re in control, and yet the story unfurls itself before you to the beat of your personal rhythm.
The story itself is a nostalgic, somber one. We’re invited into the world of a narrator who finds themself missing their daily commute to downtown San Francisco. We discover they were often in a rush to get to a destination that is ill-defined and eternally unsatisfied. They do not miss this quest, but do miss the quiet moments they took on their path there, every day, outbound and inbound, out there and back home.
It has been some time since the narrator has lived in the Bay Area. “I find you alarming,” the narrator says, now, of their beloved train system. They seem to have removed themself from the city and the great corporate chase it represents to them. Ten years have passed, and the trains they know are no longer their own. And yet, the love they hold in their heart for them is still there. A great swell of emotion is tindered in these tracks, one now shared in the depths of a beautifully rendered Bitsy game.
“Hurrying,” the narrator says, “to the time I knew you. When I still believed I’d get there. When you’d always carry me home.”
A poorly fated quest now fallen to nothing but bittersweet memory, the only thing left of substance is the path taken to get there, and more importantly, the path taken home.
Commute is a devastatingly short imprint on the way public transportation becomes such a meditative piece of our modern life. If you have a moment on your morning commute, I highly recommend you give it a try. ✧
Iconoclast Cafe 