As I entered the train I noticed at once that only one seat isn't in use already. Strangely enough several passengers are standing up on their feet, swaying to the somewhat abrupt movements of the train. Still, nobody seems interested in this particular seat.
I sense that this particular corner of four seats opposite each other where the lonely passenger makes demands on three of them by putting some of his belongings on two of them and sitting in the third one isn't exactly popular with the passengers. No one as much as looks at this particular passenger, no one even eyes the seats. It's as if he is invisible. However, after a while I sense that his presence is felt by everyone, including me.
Being tired and with feet that ache from too much walking I decide to sit down in the empty seat. As I do the strange man, sitting opposite me, lifts his head a little, but I don't think that he looks at me. -Perhaps he is blind, I think to myself. Anyway, blind or not he has conquered three seats on a train full of people looking exhausted. Quite an exploit.
Now that I sit so close to him I can't help noticing that his hands move dexteriously behind a newspaper and I realize that what I thought was debris is cuttings from the pile of newspapers that are in one of the seats. Somehow it amuses me that he is the conqueror of three seats in an overloaded train, but that all he does is to cut out whatever he finds interesting in these newspapers. Had he put up his feet or something like that I might have understood him and so would many, many of his exhausted fellow passengers. Now they only understand that this is a shady character, someone one shouldn't upset or even notice.
Sometimes the clipping movements behind the newspaper stops for a while and one of his hands goes out in a fast movement to put a new paper clip in the pile on the empty seat. All of these clippings look like nonsense to me as they don't contain anything in full. No headlines, no graphics, only a part of an article of some kind. I realize that the reason for this is that he has built his pile upside down: As each clipping is lying upside down I only catch a word from articles that he has cut through to get what's on the other side of the clipping.
However, suddenly he makes a mistake and puts a clipping face upward. At first I can't see what it is - or rather, my instinct tells me not to try to do so as it starts to dawn on me what it is he is collecting: Eyes, I see eyes, and when he gets confused after his mistake and turns the entire pile face up for some minutes I see more eyes, I see noses, and I see mouths. All of these facial details, cut out of the newspapers, take on another image. Something I saw years back, something with blood and even a stench. Yes, this is a slaughterhouse, only in paper and without the stench from the blood and the intestines. Nevertheless, a slaughterhouse, and I think that I recognize the eyes and other severed facial traits of celebrities like e.g. Brangelina, George Clooney, Obama and many other famous or just pretty people.
When I look up in bewilderment at this sight I see that all of a sudden he is staring at me. His large and sort of oblong eyes are like made in glass, very much like sea water, mirroring the clouded sky just before the thunder sets in ....
Originally Posted On Site: 2009-04-11 20:09:45
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