Snippets of Beauty

Movement

The train station was busy, but quiet. Various masks covered parts of faces, hiding away anything but the empty staring eyes. People stood in silence, said nothing, stared at phones, trains, nothingness. Movement was rare. Those who had to be elsewhere rushed away, saw and heard nothing beside their own steps leading them away. The sky was hung with white clouds.

A man with grey headphones stood out of the crowd. He didn't look different, but he moved. Almost dancing, he bounced to the tune in his heart. He bobbed and stepped and made his way pointlessly up and down the platform. He caught her eye, for she was the only other moving subject. Restless as always when waiting for trains, she paced to her own music under her own headphones. She took note of him, another non-drone.

Finally, the train this particular crowd was waiting for arrived. No sound made it through her noise-cancelling headphones. Keeping their distance, everybody boarded the metal worm. It swung them back and forth gently for a while, one stop, one start, then another stop and she left. The way the crowd moved all at the same pace, it was like it wasn't moving at all. She couldn't stand it. Too close were their bodies. She increased her pace until she felt herself moving past them. There was no point to it other than the desire not to be just another drop in the sea. The bus wasn't leaving sooner for it, even if she arrived there before the others. Yet moving slightly faster gave her space to breathe. Sat on the bus, however, she was stuck without motion once again. The sound in her ears barely distracted her until it was time to exit again. Moving quickly and no less goal-oriented than the rest of them, she made her way across the busy station, turning automatically into her own street. The clouds were now heavy and grey.

Once in her own street, she slowed slightly, no longer feeling like fleeing. That's when she spotted him. The moving man. He drew past her down her very own street, still bobbing to his own music. She tilted her head as she continued down the same way. A mere coincidence, not worth further contemplation, she decided. He crossed to the other side of the street. She assumed he lived there. He stopped under a blooming tree, gently pulled down a branch with pink flowers, and sniffed it. Her mind went racing but got nowhere. What was it she was feeling, thinking? She had to move on, down past him on the opposite side of the street, losing sight of him. Standing and staring was not an option, even though her body and mind ached to stay and look. Society would not approve. He might feel judged. Focusing on the last block ahead of her, she tried to comprehend what had startled her so. Her eyes wouldn't stop blinking as her gears were turning. She felt... something. She found him... beautiful. Not the person, not the body, but the movement. He was not just another drone. He moved where his heart pulled him. She, too, did that, sometimes. But she'd thought one had to grow out of it. Yet he, despite seeming much older than her, had no care for such standards. It was true beauty to her. It gave her joy just seeing him seek his own happiness. Was this how others saw her when she forgot about societal standards? Were her worries of being seen as weird indeed just constructs in her own mind? Or were they, he and her, of a different kind of people, one that understood?