Drones

Drones

I quietly observe the carriage.

All around, unsmiling, dead-eyed drones of the Underground pack the Bakerloo line like battery farm chickens. Non-responsive, their very demeanour whispers elegies to their disconnect from the world around them. Their mouths are sealed like tombs. Their ears are blocked by headphones that blare only with dense white noise. Personal space is not a concept that applies here. Personal space first requires a person; no such being exists in the dark and winding tunnels below London. Elbows nudge foreheads. Hair tickles noses. Too many sweaty hands grip a pole. No one complains. The rattle of the train and the rush of stale, dirty air through small openings are the only noises.

How can they be so sucked dry? I think to myself. When did they give up the fight? Not wanting to betray my thoughts I steal momentary glances at those around. The middle aged woman with the fading red hair. The smartly-dressed twentysomething City worker with the shiny face and shaven jaw. An elderly man in a reflective jacket. All following tracks through life just like the train they are on. They exert no force on the world around them.

The person opposite disembarks at Regents Park, leaving the seat vacant. The train passes into darkness once more and the window, now unobscured, abruptly becomes a mirror. There’s another.

The girl next to me reaches into her bag and pulls out a book. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.

I catch a glimpse of the screen of faded-hair lady’s iPod. Tom Jones – Sex Bomb.

The elderly man in the reflective suit winks at a baby, which giggles.

 ***

Sonder.

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.