January 31 2006

Text By Greg Fallis

Standing. Waiting. Merde. A moment of irregular stillness against the clockwork regularity of a downtown train. The express blows past, blurring faces and colors in a workaday waiting game played out underground in cities all over the world. Because it is the Charles de Gaulle Etoile in Le Metro, rushing beneath the romantic City of Lights doesn't make the wait any faster or the workday any shorter. Morning in and evening out, commuters stand trackside, impatience revealed in the expectant crossing of arms and that certain angle a head adopts to better search for light at the end of a tunnel.

Another train is coming. The lights are getting brighter. Is it? No. Not yet the right train; the one that will take us above it all, into the city of lights, to places we'd all rather be.