certhas

I like riding the Tube.
I like dropping into a mass of people and letting go. Scanning the faces, imagining the thoughts and stories behind them. I see the business men in their suits and that group of girls that look like they just stepped off the stage of a West End musical. The nameless thousands. I watch them absorbed in their music or books, far away in thoughts, or thinking nothing at all. Having just gotten up or going home after a long days work, in their rotten, expensive,self tailored, interesting, designer, second hand clothes.
I dream their lives for them, whatever their worries or thoughts or hopes or their own dreams may be. I gather fleeting impressions of lives falling apart and loves found, of another disappointing audition, or another quiet triumph over those closest to them, their quiet worry for those whom they can't help, or relief at finding help themselves at least.

I imagine kissing the woman looking sadly over the shoulder of her husband before changing lines.

How is it that I feel most at peace when moving, when I can look out of the window of a train, or in the face of a nameless stranger, of to nameless events, in that nameless city? Because it renders myself nameless?

I am tempted to say: It makes the transient nature of human reality manifest. But I know my own bullshit to well to allow these kind of phrases to take me away from the face next to mine.