Two sketches from train
Casting about, fishing for conversations, an intersection with someone anyone, anything to use the yellow glaze of booze before his time expires. It's a late night train, of course; cheap watch, nearing sixty, skin much, much darker than the norm, a face like Suharto; squat, toadlike, or, more flatteringly, weathered, a face made to be captured in terracotta, jug form. His head in rolling arcs disrupts the train, the neat inertia of forwards-all, stopping no stations, collecting the shoulders of the two salarymen on either side. They conduct solo operations and mount shuffling campaigns to make him aware of his incredible awkwardness; they rise to their feet and slump back down, a whole body belly-dance, adjusting themselves and their papers continuously.
He's not polite enough to suffer unhappiness; bear loneliness quietly, not prepared to be subjugated beneath the logic of Train and Society, not going to go quietly; bag falling noisily; hawking and promising vomit which never comes. I dream his vomit for him: an huge ballooning eruption of hurt and disatisfaction with the whole life thing, covering the train and forcing them, us, to notice him properly for the first time.
I pause at the station to try and capture him before he leaves, steal a little of him but he's at my station too somehow and nearly tripping over my feet, muttering to himself. I wonder what his brand of unhappiness is; why he loiters talking to the young un's congregating beneath the station, why he makes his way home slowly. Unhappy marriage? No marriage? A taste for drinking?
---
Two:
Fat schoolgirl, resting on her chest, self-contained, a barrel of flesh. But her eyes! A little sunken, her cheeks threatening to overgrow and bury them. She peers out of her flesh wall - fat, rare - with eyes that speak and say their owner will never be happy, eyes that float around the train, skittish, fearful of landing in one place for too long and drawing attention to herself and her bulk and presence, her skirt billowing out as she leaves the train, a lumbering, measured gait.
Casting about, fishing for conversations, an intersection with someone anyone, anything to use the yellow glaze of booze before his time expires. It's a late night train, of course; cheap watch, nearing sixty, skin much, much darker than the norm, a face like Suharto; squat, toadlike, or, more flatteringly, weathered, a face made to be captured in terracotta, jug form. His head in rolling arcs disrupts the train, the neat inertia of forwards-all, stopping no stations, collecting the shoulders of the two salarymen on either side. They conduct solo operations and mount shuffling campaigns to make him aware of his incredible awkwardness; they rise to their feet and slump back down, a whole body belly-dance, adjusting themselves and their papers continuously.
He's not polite enough to suffer unhappiness; bear loneliness quietly, not prepared to be subjugated beneath the logic of Train and Society, not going to go quietly; bag falling noisily; hawking and promising vomit which never comes. I dream his vomit for him: an huge ballooning eruption of hurt and disatisfaction with the whole life thing, covering the train and forcing them, us, to notice him properly for the first time.
I pause at the station to try and capture him before he leaves, steal a little of him but he's at my station too somehow and nearly tripping over my feet, muttering to himself. I wonder what his brand of unhappiness is; why he loiters talking to the young un's congregating beneath the station, why he makes his way home slowly. Unhappy marriage? No marriage? A taste for drinking?
---
Two:
Fat schoolgirl, resting on her chest, self-contained, a barrel of flesh. But her eyes! A little sunken, her cheeks threatening to overgrow and bury them. She peers out of her flesh wall - fat, rare - with eyes that speak and say their owner will never be happy, eyes that float around the train, skittish, fearful of landing in one place for too long and drawing attention to herself and her bulk and presence, her skirt billowing out as she leaves the train, a lumbering, measured gait.
posted by Doug @ 6/14/2005 11:13:00 pm
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