(essay)

Subway is a museum of the atypicality of typical human fates. This museum has one notable feature: its daily visit is not boring at all. They ask for a meager price for an entrance ticket, but emotions and feelings will be definitely enough for the next “visit.” Going from one end of such a native blue branch to another, sometimes you can even personally get acquainted with some unusual “museum exhibits”. It is no exception that I fell in love with this branch of the subway so much because blue is my favorite color. It is said that this sky-sea shade calms and improves concentration. Personally, I usually concentrate on the psycho types of passengers in the subway.

Of course, it’s more pleasant to sit somewhere at the end of the car, between two stout ladies and keep your faded eyes in non-fiction, but, unfortunately, a deserted place in the car is even more fiction than the plots of King’s bestsellers. Because of that I am forced to entertain myself with a fictional game “Psychologist in the subway.” The only thing that makes me happy is that I am not interested in neurobiology, otherwise I would have to find out the opinions of passengers by non-deductive methods, but by methods of surgical intervention.

Once my mother said that as a child I had a not childishly strange game: I tried to guess what diseases a person has, focusing only on external factors. I analyzed skin color, scars, or atypical pigmentation, gait, and even the breathing rate of strangers, and told my mother detailed assumptions about the diagnosis. Of course, she did not approve of this kind of curiosity of mine, but she knew that the third part of my life, which I spent in the hospital walls, had to leave an imprint on my own psyche. I say all this because now I am bored to analyze the defects of a human body, and I focused on a separate part of it – the head, or rather on the box with gray liquid inside of it, which, according to scientists, generates our thoughts, actions and social behavior.

The subway has a peculiar atmosphere. You are sharply aware of it, even against your will.

The clatter of rails, the noise of children, the aroma of everyday life and feelings of loneliness, indifference…

It would seem that all these “exhibits” under the ground are united by one, common fate – apathy, but in fact each passenger has his own portrait, and apathy is just one of its basic colors. I start painting this portrait in my head from their eyes. For example, this senior man in a leather jacket to the left of the entrance is confident, but a little sad. The girl, who is looking at the screen of her apple smartphone, is focused and excited. My favorite “museum exhibits” are children, because they are the most sincere and enlightened passengers. Their eyes always burn enthusiastically, happily…

I wonder when that sharp moment of despair comes because of which people blink their eyes? For some of the passengers, this moment is seen in their posture superiority: Their superiority is the result of the repeated vile betrayal. Others, in turn, received faded eyes, sharply furrowed eyebrows and a wrinkled forehead due to an excess of endless experiences. Another notable feature of the desperate “exhibits” of this realistic museum are the tired hands, that passengers hide in their wide pockets with undisguised shame…

There are thousands of “exhibits”, and the emotion is one, common. It is a pity that the emotion of doom, fear and despair prevails among the “exhibits” of the native nation. If this continues, the subway will not become a common mode of transport, but an ingrained lifestyle.

Vasylkivska station. The train does not go further. Passengers, please free the wagons.

December 14, 2020