The commute

On looking in and looking out

By Ming Ming

It’s 7:30am on a largely grey winter’s morning with a hint of sunlight piercing through an otherwise imposing cloud cover, perhaps reflective of mother nature’s own indecisiveness. I’m half an hour through my train commute to work, one that catapults me from the seeming tranquillity and cookie-cutter order of suburbia to the throes of urban chaos in Melbourne’s concrete jungle. My fellow passengers appear plugged into their phones and withdrawn with emotionless, porcelain countenances, giving away little of what could be lurking in the depths of their hearts and minds.

As I scan the carriage I wonder about the possible backstories of each passenger as if they were protagonists in an imaginary novella. Like a dilettante, a shrewd aesthetician who knows that beauty lingers in both the seen and unseen; in things left unsaid, in lingering glances, in wafting fragrances, in subtle sighs of exasperation, in squeals of untampered delight, this city-bound train is my artistic canvas. Because the best stories are the ones not yet written, the ones that hold all the potentiality of infinite untrodden paths and countless possible endings.