By Ryan Mobilia
All I want to do is read the paper... it is the one thing that pushes me out into the stinging cold air of the bathroom. Away from my showering fantasy of hot springs, summer days and adventure. I was far removed from the day that lies ahead, but I know what will take me back to that place. I know it so well, the pages set out in a beautiful order that I can only imagine my life to one day resemble. It is a cold winter’s morning; ice has formed over my windscreen. My car stubbornly refuses to co operate on our short trip to the train station. Like a child nearing the dentists chair, it fusses and fights me. We sputter along at the ‘speed of snail’.
When I park the car I prepare myself for the run to the platform, a business suited flash, as I fly past a dawdling group of high schoolers. "Must be Clark Kent!" I heard one of them jibe. Kids weren't as quick witted where I went to school, I thought. I didn't run for the train itself, there would be plenty of those. I ran to secure those wonderful pages of uniformity, which gave structure to my morning. Structure to my life. All I want to do is read the paper...
My exchanges with my dealer were always short and sharp. "Cold out there!" "Yeah, thanks." "Have a good one!" "Ok, see ya tomorrow." Rapid conversations are the forte of my 'paper guy', that’s for certain. Eager not to miss out on any potential purchases, but also not to dismiss the clients he already has. He sits all day distributing medicine through paper, like a chemist handing out pain killers.
My paper means much more to me than pictures and words; it is an escape from reality. I soon lose myself in the stories and images that flood forth from within its walls, as my train rattles along not much faster than my car, and certainly no smoother. Does anything really want to get where they are going? Or like me, is the journey the reward?
I look up momentarily. I’m surrounded by school kids who jostle for seats that they'll occupy only for minutes. I wonder if the younger ones are driven by their screaming leg muscles, shouting up at them "Give me rest! I'm carrying twice your weight in that schoolbag and your back has called in sick again this morning!" I feel for those poor little fellas, but their high pitched voices, do little to endear them to me. How do they have so much energy?
Two mothers chat back and forth like the they are the only ones in our "cone of occasional silence" the struggles of ones children to concentrate on their studies blasted from their surround sound voice boxes. "I told him we all get teachers like that in our life. He's got to hang in there. All he wants to do is sleep." Well, I constrain myself from shouting, all I want to do is read the paper.
As I look around the carriages there're so many faces just like mine. Each captivated by their drug of choice. Some have their headphones blaring, others text their fingerprints away while many noses are buried deep in books. The rest of my trip flies by. All around me, the train, like a travelling community, welcomes and farewells. I’m in my own private universe until we jerk to a halt at the end of the line.
Before we charge into the battles that are our days and lives, we all attempt an escape. Bouncing along like sardines in foggy windowed cans, we escape in some way, shape or form and to each their own. But all I want to do is read the paper.
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