Passengers

Early mornings, you'd find me in queue at the FX terminal. Another employee on the way to work. Another commuter battling the challenging world of public transportation. Just another sleepy soul, trapped in the routine of daily life. It would be excessive to say that it is almost like a community, that long queue, because it's not. It's just a group of people whose faces are familiar to each other, but they're not there to make friends. A terse nod when asked if this was the end of the line is the most interaction that can go. Each other's presence is incidental, an irrelevant detail in the travel from point A to point B.

Those days when shuttles take long to arrive and my mind is not preoccupied with my other thoughts, I practice characterization for my fiction writing. You take boredom, a need to stay awake, and the long wait for the next FX -- and you get me, the casual observer. It helps if you have your earphones on. It lends a sense of disinterest in the process of observation. You can stare long at someone without making them feel like their personal space is being intruded. The earphones give you the benefit of the doubt that although your eyes are fixed, your mind is actually elsewhere. I lay a disclaimer here. Don't use my tip for stalking. Please. I have enough of my own guilt to worry about.

There are those students from UA&P. With their youthful and perky outfits and air of their parents' money. Two of them are friends who are freshmen (I can tell by their age and their textbooks). One always comes in late while the other saves a spot on the line for her. I sometimes want to tell them that it's unfair for the ones who arrived earlier, but I let them be. It's too small a thing to worry about. Besides, they get enough piercing stares from the more irritable passengers.

The middle-aged lady who always carries a book with her. For a couple of days, it was a copy of the Sherlock Holmes short stories collection. It amused me since Holmes is one of my most favorite book characters of all time. I wondered if she was enjoying it as much as I did when I first read the stories in high school.

There's that good-looking pair of mid-twenties corporate professionals. Who look like they stepped straight out of a yuppie magazine. Guy's tall dark, and handsome - . Girl looks like a doll with porcelain skin, with hair always made up and clothes that reek of Cosmo. When I see them, I sometimes wonder if I dress too casually for my age and profession. Oh, well.

And there's the old couple. They're probably around sixty years old. The old man is frail looking with hunched shoulders; the woman has a kind face. He carries a leather briefcase and his wife just keeps him company in the queue, she doesn't get on the shuttle. They talk quietly while waiting and sometimes she asks the manongs at the terminal if she could borrow one of the monobloc chairs for her husband to sit on. She just waits with him, stands beside him. And when the shuttle arrives, she straightens his polo, kisses him on the cheek, helps him inside the front seat, and waves him goodbye.

Once, in another seemingly normal morning, I find the old couple in their usual place. But after a few minutes, I discerned some agitation in the crowd. I took off one of my earphone pieces and realized that the old lady was asking for help from those standing nearby. Her husband was apparently feeling ill and they had to call a trike and help him inside and rush him to the hospital.

I honestly did not know how to react, what to think. I was somewhat a long way off from the commotion, but I felt the tension. I feel like I'm having a crash-course of self realization. Here was a real life couple. Apparently, with deep love for one another. How do you find someone you'd be willing to do anything for? How do you never get tired of loving each other? How do you ever get to that time when you're willing to just stand beside someone patiently, talking quietly, until it was time to say goodbye. Until it was time.

I find myself actually trying to listen to the music from my earphones. Consciously. Drown in music these thoughts and questions I have no answers for.