Tube Travelling 5

Down and outs of the underground

Everything hurts, face scarred, fingers torn and filthy, an empty coffee cup, held out as a container, begging the commuting workers and tourists for spare change. In a changing world less change available. Screen faces ignoring the plight of the stricken and hungry. He looks at the people he is throwing his life out to, nobody engages, nobody sees this person. A person. A soul. Lost but a soul. Lost in the depths of whatever despair is afflicting him. But he studies us. And we ignore him. 

Tube Travelling 4

There are an unusual number of observers on the tube today - 3 out the 12 where usually it is just me. Everyone else lost in their world of screen - games, music, downloads and the usual odd woman engaged in her morning makeup rituals. I briefly cross eyes with the other two, interest in their eyes, reflecting back my own. 

Tube Travelling 3

Years of travelling the same route, then forced to redirect on the whim of the underground bosses - directed walkways and thought-through one way systems that interfere with the age old desire for humans to find the path of least resistance and so in defiance of the rules we walk through no entry tunnels and earn a few more minutes grace on our journeys much to the bemusement of more rule-abiding tourists. 

Tube Travelling 2

An ashy old man in an olive parka sits on the Victoria line holding a plastic bottle of water, his hand is twitching making the bottle squeak in that creaky plastic bottle way, while he watches a large beige woman  transform herself in a morning routine that ought to be performed at home. No preservation of the mystery is left to the imagination - face sculpting with shades of foundation and powder, eye shadow, mascara, lash curlers, under chin shading. Fascinating to the man. Amazing to me that it takes so much makeup to look bare faced.

Tube travelling

The neurotic itchy people seem to pierce my eye more readily than the still calm people. Leg twitching, uncontrolled expressive faces, tics from too many drugs, inability to sit still, those with ants in their pants. Drawing myself to bring up my inner stillness, collecting myself in self awareness, holding each muscle and bone in deliberate poise, extending elegance to counter the messy, jerky, tic-y thing that I am watching.