poddin'

every once in a while my thoughts turn morbidly curious...

i will cross the street and wonder what my body would look like after it was smeared down by a speeding car - would i be all artful limbs displayed in the most beautiful pattern - or would i look more like the roadkill pigeon that graced my street for about a week earlier this summer?

i will enter a corner store, sense some random tension and then begin to wonder what i'd do if the loitering teen pulled a gun or a knife on the clerk.

i'll tramp down the subway steps and wonder idly if all the garbage on the steps will get tangled up in my shoes and will i then fall face first down the stairs - the impact driving my teeth through my lips leaving me with horrific scaring for life...

lately my wonderings have me running "stranded" scenarios. the other day i was sitting on the subway (with my ipod headphones on, natch) and got bored by the latest prattling star news in my daily metro when i began to look around and marvel at all the folk wearing headphones. and how many of those same folk have the distinctive white ipod headphones.

which then gets me wondering what would happen if for some bizarre strange reason our subway car was sucked into some other reality where we weren't in any immediate peril, but that we couldn't leave the train. sorta an urban lord of the flies.

first we'd break off into groups. the moms with strollers. the stinky rubbies coming home from a day at the local pub. there'd be the group of tragically dressed teens - the boys with pants falling off and the girls with belly shirts showing off their baby fat bellies. we'd have the group of sweet and not quite yet senile seniors. and then there would be the folk who had headphones. we'd all embrace a 'we're in this together' spirit and share bottled water, gator aide and chocolate treats.

however, it's inevitable that each group would begin to splinter under petty tensions brought on by the stranding and the mindnumbing affect that the silver walls and red seats would bring. in the headphone group we'd begin a natural caste striation and the ipod folk would either begin to think we were better than everyone else and we'd start our own super-cool survior group. or would all the other headphone owners just shun the 'pod people as trend-sheep and they'd all stop sharing their chocolate covered peanuts with us. which, sadly would force the ipoders to stage a little rebellion (to the soundtrack of some fabulous alienation music - probably the arcade fire or modest mouse) to take over the covert supply of wrapper candies that the seniors have been hiding from us all. it could get messy.

ok - back to reality. when not having a psychotic break on the subway - i'm actually thinking about the fact that toronto is a fairly large city and it has the reputation of being a city that makes it VERY difficult to meet new people in. the older i get, the more i realize that the only new people that get introduced to my life are ones i meet through work. one could logically assume that a public leveler like the subway could be good place to meet new and interesting people - but besides the fact that as a confirmed torontonian i think every second person out there is off their nut, it's really hard to start up a conversation with the cute guy across the car when we both have our headphones on.

ipods are a great way to kill the monotony of the trip - but it really does make our already singular and alone existence seem all that much more lonely. i won't stop listening to music on the subway - but it makes me wonder what would happen if people started being people again....
[music | a.f.i., "bleed black"]