Wandering Thoughts: October 2006

Thailand, ayuttaya

Stazione di Arcore

By Michael Quin

Amongst echoed footsteps through the walkway beneath Stazione Arcore, there stands a man who wails like he suffers more than I have ever known. He wails like victims in the news do, but without a screen between us it’s so stark. It is at once both an embodiment of reality’s true horror, and a striking dramatisation so artfully composed as to cause discomfort. He stands off balance on twisted legs, leaning forward and to the right in such a way that his right cheek is always wet with tears. He is there most days, and each time he stirs the thought that this haggard frame should not be so familiar as it is. He first catches the eye as you descend the worn plastic stairs, appearing as a rough diagonal in a rigid straight passage, a well of sorrows in a soulless path between places.

We pass him by, busy in our own stories. We remember the place we’ve just left, or imagine where we are heading, and between the two life seems too full for this anomaly, standing in a space people only pass through. And so with great purpose we charge on past him - a crying old man. impatient at the train’s usual tardiness or perhaps at our own morning’s division of minutes, his sobs sounding frightfully close through the crisp morning air. We pass him with the disinterest held for a bad play, detached perhaps through fear of playing some farcical role itself an anomaly to our lives, we are just on our way somewhere, this is nowhere yet, we tell ourselves. Maybe it’s just too early in the morning.

Behind him, scrawled in angry red font, are anti-Semitic slogans by someone who thought we needed to know, and who himself wants to be know him as R.A.S.H., and I think of where they all belong, these people consumed by hatred and those consumed by grief. Are they really just by the wayside, or are they parts of all of us, only spilt into the open. I think of fear and what it works in us, and I think of the tears it brings and the enemies it paints for us.

I ascend the stairs onto platform two where I stand alone amongst a large group, enjoying the return of the sun on the back of my neck. My eyes wander up the tracks to the corner where the train always appears rolling steady, but not yet. The rusted old sign across the track waits for me to read it as I do each morning. It warns us all that 'vietato attravesare i binari' and I try to pronounce the phrase perfectly in my mind, full of self doubt about my vowels, my sloppy rolled ‘r’ and confused emphasis. I’m consoled by the thought that it’s only the first Italian line of another Italian day. I watch the dance of cigarette smoke around me and sense the shifting of weight of those standing either side as one minute passes into the next, and an entire platform of people seem lost in a hazy thought, and I’ve already forgotten about the man weeping down the stairs.

I will see him there tomorrow, if not then the next day or the one after that for sure. I will look for him as I descend the stairs but if I forget I know his wailing will find me. I’ll hope he isn’t cold again when I pass, and I’ll look for the tears on his right cheek, and wonder why he cries every day... Is it for pain, or sorrow, or money?

Then I’ll ascend the stairs again to be lost in the platform of commuters, maybe others will be wondering about the same man, or perhaps they think they already know how it is. Either way I'll be there, curious at which thought to follow at that hour when all seems so heavy and so light, when all seems just a wandering thought.