Morning dance
She was full of warmth and smiled at me when we exchanged glances.
"When's the next train?" I asked, conscious of my echoing voice around a room a little too whitewashed.
"7:35," she said. "So you're right on time."
That was how we began talking for the following half an hour, as the three-carriage train lumbered its way through a quiet public holiday morning that promised of sunshine. Morsels of reflection, meta-life discussions traded like cultural recipes.
I was an hour and a half earlier than the appointed meeting time with friends.
The city was incredibly hazy, a fine blanket of somethingness seeped through the streets, cold and dreamlike. The light was shy and bashful, peeping politely between gaps in skycrapers. All was silent except for the persistent clacking of pedestrian crossings which seemed not to be aware that they were deserted, and the occasional near-empty tram rumbling down the street.
Wandering somewhat aimlessly, eyeing shops which were resolutely shut, the street cleaner and I seemed to chase each other up and down both sides of the street in a game whereby neither knew the rules. He drove a little buggy with bright yellow brushes which made whirring noises, I drove a little camera with no yellow brushes, which made more of a whine than a whirr.
I grabbed a coffee at a streetside cafe. Some kind of popular music was playing, which I eventually identified as "Linkin Park" - which, if you know the group, is normally the completely wrong kind of music to hear on a morning like this. Oddly enough, because it was a morning of possibilities, any music would have been fine. A young hungover couple trundled up the sidewalk, jigging and singing to the noise blasting from the outdoor speakers, and disappeared somewhere.
At the demise of my coffee, a peppermint tea which scalded a bit of my hand accompanied me into the growing patch of sun. I settled on the steps of Flinders Street Station - the meeting point, still early - and marvelled at the changing scene over the edges of my book.
An elderly man sat nearby, and I voiced a "hello" when he looked up at me.
"Hello," said he, sitting down on the steps, looking as if he ought to be creaking. "Have I met you from somewhere?"
Perhaps I was being overtly friendly. "Probably not," said I.
"A bit of a chill eh?" said he.
He pulled out a cigarette. A young man came and asked him if he could spare a smoke, and borrowed his lighter too. People came and people went. Under the clocks being a meeting point, a waiting point, people were anxious, impatient, smiling, smoking, taking photographs.
The hungover couple suddenly reappeared and walked past me a second time, disappearing into the belly of the station. Suddenly life seemed little more than a complex dance - you join hands and circle with some, others, you fleet past without a second glance, and chance sometimes means you meet some twice, thrice, many times - and then there are some that are always beyond your line of sight.
It was a strange thought, an odd, fuzzy image, and I left it behind on the dull grey steps to be evaporated by time.
01 April 2002, Monday, 10:29 PM
Alter ego of dandruff
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