What happens to subway cars?
The subway train stopped in front of me with a squeal. I turned and said goodbye to Mark.
"See you tomorrow." adding a half hearted wave. I quickly walk through as the doors begin to close. Luckily today it is not too crowded, and I find a place to sit without too much trouble. I sit down near one of the doors.
The flourescant lights are bright, making up for the darkness of the tunnels between the stations. I can only make out vague details of the wall as the train passes by. The wall is bare and non-descript, like what I envision prisons are like.
Light invades from the next station. It is bright compared to the tunnel, but it still seems dark somehow. Its almost like no matter how many lights you have, the sub-terrainian esence still pervades.
You can always tell when you're underground or deep inside a building. No matter how much light, how much air is circulating, how much life there is, instinctively you understand you're not in somewhere open, somewhere real.
After a few stations, I transfer to another route. This one is just like the first. I feel cut off from reality. Even the other passengers don't seem real. People enter, stay for a very finite amount of time and then go, as though they were never there, they leave it all behind like it never existed.
They don't notice the sounds, the smells, the feel of the train moving and rocking or even really look at the machine which they are temporarily situated. They don't even lok at the other passengers out of some misplaced sense that they don't want someone else to look back at them. Afraid to acknowledge strangers.
Its almost like the subway doesn't really exist. Or that it does temporarily, as long as we need it to. When we enter, we don't really acknowledge it, we pretend we're somewhere else, or simply ignore it. It is a tiresome necessity of city living. We go on without really paying any attention to it.
Where do they go? How many times will the subway car I am on travel back and forth on this route? Will I ever chance on riding in the same car again? With the same people? Or will this car never be used for weeks. Sometimes I think too much.
*The names in this have been chaged to protect the innocently guilty.*
"See you tomorrow." adding a half hearted wave. I quickly walk through as the doors begin to close. Luckily today it is not too crowded, and I find a place to sit without too much trouble. I sit down near one of the doors.
The flourescant lights are bright, making up for the darkness of the tunnels between the stations. I can only make out vague details of the wall as the train passes by. The wall is bare and non-descript, like what I envision prisons are like.
Light invades from the next station. It is bright compared to the tunnel, but it still seems dark somehow. Its almost like no matter how many lights you have, the sub-terrainian esence still pervades.
You can always tell when you're underground or deep inside a building. No matter how much light, how much air is circulating, how much life there is, instinctively you understand you're not in somewhere open, somewhere real.
After a few stations, I transfer to another route. This one is just like the first. I feel cut off from reality. Even the other passengers don't seem real. People enter, stay for a very finite amount of time and then go, as though they were never there, they leave it all behind like it never existed.
They don't notice the sounds, the smells, the feel of the train moving and rocking or even really look at the machine which they are temporarily situated. They don't even lok at the other passengers out of some misplaced sense that they don't want someone else to look back at them. Afraid to acknowledge strangers.
Its almost like the subway doesn't really exist. Or that it does temporarily, as long as we need it to. When we enter, we don't really acknowledge it, we pretend we're somewhere else, or simply ignore it. It is a tiresome necessity of city living. We go on without really paying any attention to it.
Where do they go? How many times will the subway car I am on travel back and forth on this route? Will I ever chance on riding in the same car again? With the same people? Or will this car never be used for weeks. Sometimes I think too much.
*The names in this have been chaged to protect the innocently guilty.*
posted by Tara The Terrible!! at 3:12 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home