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Usually when I ride the subway I have my nose in a book. I surface briefly after every couple of stops to get my bearings. When I am within one stop of my destination, I insert my bookmark and put the book away, because (I know from experience) otherwise I might read myself right past my getting-off place.
Some of my best reading time is on our TTC subway, and one of my versions of hell is being stuck on a stalled subway with no book to read. Nevertheless, I know that I miss a lot by reading. Watching the by-play of my fellow travelers would give me writing material for years, if I'd only pay attention.
Here's some of what I see when I put my book down: I could rant for pages about the growing phenomenon of "I'll stand where I like and you can't make me move!" People who have no intention of exiting park themselves more and more frequently right in front of the subway doors, impeding those who are trying to get off or on. Even more egregious are the groups that collect at those exits, chatting, totally oblivious of the subway riders around them. Nowadays, I find groups of three or more standing at the top or bottom of escalators or stairs. In summer it is sometimes clear that the group is made up of yokels (I mean this in the best possible sense of the word) who don't have subways—or escalators or even stairs, apparently—in their home towns, and who thus don't have a clue how dangerous it is to congregate right where people need to move freely.
There is more to TTC sights than ranting material. This morning as I came up the steps at the Broadview station I heard the strains of a well-played violin. The violinist was hidden around a corner, out of my path, but for once I had change in my coat pocket so I rounded the corner to leave him some money. He was playing a very fast passage, unfamiliar to me, and I expected to see a student musician. What I found was an old man, in disreputable clothing, with a black hole in the front of his mouth where a tooth had gone missing. Not to put too fine a point on it, he looked like a bum. The missing tooth made me think of a bar fight. The shabby clothes meant down-and-out. But the music was ethereal. How had he retained his skills over years of disappointment and want? How had he managed even to keep his violin through all the difficulties of his life?
That was the direction my mind took. But what if he is actually an accomplished local musician who periodically blacks out a front tooth with actors' gum, picks up some threadbare clothes at Value Village, and becomes a subway busker? What if experience has shown him that a poverty-struck violinist rakes in more moolah than a well-dressed one? Whatever his story is, his music changed the mood of all those who passed through that station today.
Ah, the TTC. A million souls on the move, each with his own story . . .
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