In the swarm

Today I join the flow on the street rushing to work I used to watch from my window while having morning coffee; thus begins real life. I watch people up close on the metro: women wearing skirts and sneakers; men in ties carrying a lunch bag; a father taking three kids to school; a mother talking and playing with her baby; a teenager in a thin jacket singing to himself; an old women with a hat whose face I have seen in movies about old Europe; and an old man in a black coat with fur collar who said, “Beauty always before age.” Despite sleepiness in the morning or tiredness in the late afternoon, their faces all look alive – these are real faces of real people. Then I heard Chris Marker, who wrote in Sunless, “I have been around the world several times, and now only banality still interests me.”