Central Station is a very busy place. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through every day, milling and scurrying like ants, silently cursing each other under their breaths, avoiding eye contact at all costs.
I was working at Global Corp, (lucky me). Every weekday morning I would take the train to the City. I would arrive at Central between seven and eight in the morning, and take a ten-minute walk to the office. In the afternoon, I would leave between five thirty and six thirty, and head for Central to get the train home.
And every single time, she would be standing there, facing the ticket barriers just inside the main entrance. “She”? A bag lady, street person, homeless person, if you prefer. She would be standing there in her regular spot between the fast food place and travel agent, back to the wall so she didn’t get in the way of the people rushing to and from work. Next to her would be a battered and buckled old brown suitcase gaping at the seams, and a supermarket shopping trolley containing—I assumed—her possessions. There were bits of cardboard, plastic bags full of god knows what, empty bottles, a bright yellow rubber duck (of all things) and, bizarrely, a stack of crumpled paper napkins printed with the words “Mikonos Cafe. The taste of the Aegean”.
She could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. She had the gaunt and haunted look of a junkie. Her clothing was old, tattered and dirty. Her hair was long and greasy and had not been combed or brushed or washed for many a month (year?). Every time I saw her, which was twice a day in the working week, she had bright red lipstick smeared inexpertly, gruesomely on her lips and ...
Continues in FIENDS AND FREAKS now available at Amazon.com
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wow. that is quite the saga. so many walked passed her i wonder how many ever took the time to talk...
Hi Brian, yes I often thought that myself. The part about the homeless woman with a suitcase and smeared red lipstick at the ticket barriers day in day out, is true. The rest I made up. For years, morning and evening, commuting to and from work, I did see her, and wondered about her story.
Thanks for your comment, and for stopping by.
Wow, you sucked me in with this story. Everybody has a story. I've thought about that when I was working at the middle school. Teachers who seemed ordinary and placid on the outside turned out to be living through trauma and drama and realities as strange as fiction. Then I started to wonder about the kids . . .
Lil
Hi puny human, at the level of the individual, our stories are all tangled up and knotted together, comprising the "superstrings" of stories at the level of the group/community; and those stories are all tangled up and knotted together, comprising stories at the species level, etc etc! Thanks for your comment. Cheers, MM
"Keep 'em separated" says the chorus of a rock song. Anyone who believes demo-crazy will keep the Masters of the Universe from enslaving them, pitting them against one another and blowing up the planet is clearly not "all there". Julius Caesar spelt it out, and so did others.
The abandoned and exploited kids on the streets of Cambodia's capital depend on the large-scale initiative of an Australian private individual and his suppoters to rescue and educate them. Why is the sick media focusing on the death of the king there instead? While paeophiles and pimps do busines, why is "aid" being given to this basket case governent? We know why.
mgeorge, our reptilian overlords (=cold-blooded leaders) have been keeping us separated for thousands of years, but perhaps the tide is now, finally turning. A lot of people think so.
And "people" doesn't include politicians. And I'm almost at the point where I won't include journalists in that categry either.
In fact, at this point in time there are large numbers of entities who aren't people, any more...
Thanks for your comments.
COMMENTS? Come on... gimme your best shot!