Metro Music

To deal with my sense of a lack of personal space on the metro I use music. With my headphones on and some music playing I can 'push back' at the people around me in a way I can not physically do.

The music helps me focus on not being anxious about the presence of so many unknowns around me. I make neither type I nor type II errors as far as I know. Type I is believing there is a threat where there is none. Type II is believing there is no threat when there is one.

I tend more towards type I, which is the least serious of the two errors. In fact, it is more like generalized anxiety about being around people I do not know and do not necessarily care to know.

Sometimes I look at my friends and think: how would he/she appear to me if I saw them on the metro? Occasionally I do see a friend on the metro. They do not always see me. Usually we say hi, but not always. Maybe it is too busy or we are too tired or I don't bother to break them out of their reverie. It is never alarming. For instance, I do not see friends as different people when I see them on the metro.

Other times I look at a stranger on the metro who seems odd to me (not a threat but a weird unknown) and I think maybe that person is just like my friend. Maybe they are not a demented smelly idiot and pathological liar. Maybe in fact that person right there is an intelligent and considerate person I would be proud to call a friend? I mean this seriously because when I get freaked out by strangers on the metro I tell myself they are people just like me.

Jekyll and Hyde

Do you become a different person on the metro? Sometimes I think I do. If others do too, that means that objective observation on the metro is impossible because I'm not seeing others as they really are, only as they are on the metro.

Metro Montreal

My meditations on Montreal's Metro and its Map.

Inspired by Marc Auge's 'In the Metro'