Delays and the gift of fellow passengers

Well it’s been fun and games on the train this week, with delays due to attempted (one hopes only attempted) suicide further down the line meaning power outage and no movement from the station and then a few days later due to electrical faults on carriages requiring us to be pushed down the hill by a second train dispatched especially for the job. Mmmm- confidence inspiring! Delayed an hour and a half in total on those 2 trips. Starts to sound like b*shit when you sprout some new wacky train story as you slink in late to work.

However, let it be noted that generally I have nothing but fabulous things to say about the country trains I catch daily to get myself between work and home. After all the interiors are the same stuffed-spanish-olive green as several of my favourite jackets, they are rather plumply stuffed, they are cosy and almost always safe feeling. I like them. I like it when I get on board and find my spot and sink into day dreaming, napping, writing, drawing, reading, knitting, or doing office work. It’s like a mobile study/armchair, where no one but the most chatty drunk or lonely old person will interrupt your musing out the window. Even that’s ok.

Early in the week an older woman was fascinated by the flow diagram I was scribbling away at (hyeah, coz it was so interesting) and asked was that how I organised all my thoughts / solved problems. I thought that was cute, and answered that no, it wasn’t, that this was for work, and that it was a way of capturing how I saw a system, to see if other people also saw it the same way, and for us to figure things out better together. She went on to tell me about a friend of hers who needs a lot of emotional support at the moment, and how it makes her tired. I asked if she had anyone that was easy to be around, that nurtured her too, and she told me about her elderly gentleman friend, who sounded like an absolute sweet heart. We found ourselves having quite an honest conversation about suffering and support, having actual eye contact, and meaning what we said. She went back to her reading, a little book of inspiring quotes. Before we slid into Central Station – the end of the line – she asked if I would like to pick a reading from the book.

I love that random act of kindness and intimacy that you sometimes share with strangers with whom you are thrown together by chance. I thanked her and opened the page at random and read two quotes which I liked so much I asked if I could copy them down into my notebook. She seemed pleased by that. She thanked me for having talked with her. I wrote them down, it seemed to take ages, and by the time I was done we had stopped at Central and it was time to leave. I left her to head off to Bondi for a goodbye party for an exchange student, and me to head off to the office - slightly late, as ever, slightly dazed by the city, as ever, and feeling just a little bit more tender and open hearted as a result.