People watching has always been a great alternative to pass my time during long subway rides from one of the city to another. It was always fascinating to think that another person who is sitting across from you has a completely different life, comes from a completely different background, and knows completely different things. It's the possibility that this type of person, whoever they maybe, could have crossed through my life for the briefest moment. Even the conversations I hear on subway are simply amazing. I enter a world that would have been otherwise alien to me. While I've always observed people and wondered what their worlds must be like, I never actually wrote anything down.Take this man for example. I was on the 5 train on August 18th on the first or second car. I got on at E 180th St in the Bronx along with him. I surreptitiously took a picture of him and proceeded to create a story.
A Polish man, perhaps, of maybe fifty to sixty years coming from a working class background. His face contains lines of hardened skins from years of labor and familial turmoil. He's traveling to the city in the middle of the day to visit a potential employer about a job. The big, bulky laptop bag houses an old IBM from the mid 90s and important documents.
This man doesn't take any bullshit. He's a very reasonable man, but life hasn't always returned this quality. He looks to the front of the train and hope life takes him farther than this train does.
