The poetry of commuting

I know some people really loathe public transport. There are times when I feel, awkward and wrong-shaped and dangerously visible: usually when I step into a late-night or weekend train carriage full of braying rapper-wear clad adolescents sprawling everywhere – or drunk guys, the unshaven, loud type. Outcrops of masculinity I just don’t fit in around. People being loud on public transport really rattles me for some reason.

The morning suited tide of commuters, though, that I really enjoy. Being a morning person, I have an unfair edge. Everyone else seems more soft-focussed and vulnerable, I’m more often than not sharp and switched-on. And while most of the people on my morning train will have office or city jobs, there’s still a surprising diversity.

I’m learning to recognise a few characters. The little blonde girl with amazing Rastafarian dreadlocks and baggy shorts on her way to school. The evening train gentle giant, the big guy who’s rather simple and seems to ride trains between the city and Clifton Hill, looking at people or striking up half-conversations.

And once, just once, on a morning train when I was running very late, I found myself sitting to a poet whose stuff I rather like. I saw him at the Balmain Writer’s Festival – in fact, I’ve only ever heard him read. Fabulous, husky Canadian voice. His readings are all a bit sex and death (and tend to equate evil with sexual impotence), but have a visceral power. Ian McBryde. Didn’t have the courage to speak to him. He looked rather different out of the reading context, not in his arty black and with the addition of scuffed shoes and glasses. He was thumbing a paperback that looked to have something to do with his current interest in the Second World War. I suppose a poet normally moves about with an expectation of anonymity, and I didn’t want to pierce that. And what would I have said?

I also hand out, mentally, various awards during the morning commute. Best Male Business Shirt. Most Interesting Female Face. Most Touching Expression. Most Unnecessary Fashion Statement. Whatever I can make up.

This morning’s Most Touching Expression went to a sad round face, belonging to a sad round girl. She looked as though her job was being the mournful clown in the Commedia dell’Arte. Quite wrenching. My heart always goes out to people who look just a little left-out, as though someone has kept them out of the schoolyard games with the cool kids half their life. It’s patronising I know, but there it is.

Most Interesting Female Face of this morning’s train went to a woman who also scored Most Unnecessarily Dramatic Pose (slouched across a bench to lean on taking up over two seats, then looking surly when someone asked her to move up). She had the broadest, squarest cheeks I’ve seen, coupled with a long, strong jaw-line. Still a feminine jaw, but powerful-looking. Add her slight pallor, jet-black hair and pale green eyes she had a – I don’t know – slightly predatory look. Rather than stare at her like she was a vampire in daylight I went back to my book.

So this is how I amuse myself when I’m tired, get to the train late and feel less like reading on the way to work.

Hope to review “God of Small Things” tomorrow.

Oh and a big happy birthday to Marcus and the delightful Missjenjen!