From beautiful to ugly, in just a few seconds...

I was traveling home on the train and it was an uneventful trip for most of the way. The warm weather made people quiet and we stared with restless boredom at the floor, at each other, or our hands.

I decided to open my new briefcase from Muji (www.muji.com). I bought it because of the minimalist Japanese styling and it's the right size for my portfolio. The only downside, which I discovered the hard way during my commute, is that you have to pay attention to how you open it. If you open the zippers on both sides, the briefcase playfully opens at an amazing rate of speed and dumps all of its contents on the floor.

And voila, this is what happened to me. Fortunately I did not have anything embarrassing inside the briefcase. But my portable phone hit the floor, some papers gently floated across the aisle of the train, and a pen rolled under some seats. A woman kindly came to my assistance, even though she had a baby in a stroller. I thanked her and she returned to talking with the friend next to her in a mixture of French and an African language.

What happened next is when beauty intersected ugliness. A tall, very slim young French woman stood in front of me, looking at her portable phone. Her understated but expensive style of clothing suggested to me that she would get off the train in a city two stops ahead of mine, a town known for its 'bourgeois' ambiance. There was not an ounce of fat nor a pimple or stray hair on her young proud body. This modern goddess tossed her long hair and gazed with disinterest at her audience.

Her cold yet undeniably spectacular physical perfection provided all of us on the train with a welcome visual distraction. It also conveniently blocked my view of an older man across the aisle, who coughed loudly and stared at every move I made. Perhaps my tumbling briefcase captured his imagination and he was eagerly waiting for an encore.

But back to ugliness...it happened in seconds. The train stopped at the station (I guessed correctly - it was indeed the town I thought of) and the lovely Ice Queen got ready to open the door. At the same time, the African women got up and pushed the baby stroller to the door, accidentally bumping Queenie's silver-sandaled foot. They immediately apologized, with shy smiles that showed no bad intent. But the young woman's face became distorted with emotion -- instant anger, an frown of disapproval and then a hard look. She said nothing but turned her back and walked off the train.

I watched her from the window as the train rolled out of the station. Her hair moved in the breeze, her long legs moved like a model on a runway, and her perfectly shaped face was set in an expressionless mask. Yet how ugly she suddenly seemed...and her soul walked heavily behind, casting a dark shadow over each step she took.

Under a luminous grey sky

Paris is a city of dreams for many people. For me, it's my home and a place of very specific realities. It's a place where almost everything in my life had changed or was lost, and then was re-born again. Some streets still have the power to create a brief, piercing nostalgia in my heart. But most often I walk past these snapshots of visual memory and see and feel only the present. The layers of time rest gently on me today.

As the train takes me from the banlieue towards the center of the city, I watch the anonymous towers of apartment buildings flash past the window. The sky is a luminous grey bowl and creates a pearlized monotone of the landscape. Inside the train, all of us are clothed in winter coats, shadows and our private thoughts. Hands hold tickets, a paperback book, or rest passively on laps. The cold wind has dried the hands of a woman sitting next to me and she carefully rubs creme on them. As passengers, we study her motions, restlessly eager for something interesting to break the monotony. When the train stops at stations, people silently move on and off the train, and a breeze enters the compartment before the door slams shut again.

The window next to me has letters scratched on it, a series of random curves and what looks like SCR. I wonder about the hands that did this act and why. Did other passengers watch with disinterest or curiosity? Who got nervous and moved to another section of the train? Who smiled and nodded?

The train shudders and jerks to a stop. I jump to my feet and join the press of people who exit the train. Within minutes, I’m walking on the street and the train is gone, taking away the echoes of my thoughts, the warmth of my seat now occupied by another traveler.