That night on the train home her eyes followed me the entire way. Every reflection, every half-glimpsed person shouldering their way out the doors, every hushed conversation was a blink of those green eyes, a whisper through reinforced plexiglass. Instead of my usual, measured glances around the subway car, my head swung wildly, hoping to catch her. When my stop finally came, I rushed out the still-opening doors and ran up the escalator towards street level. I needed out. Needed to breath. Pushing open the station doors was like a bucket of cold water on my face. Lights. People. Traffic. Real wind. This is what I needed now; to lose myself in this above-ground maelstrom of human interaction, this turbulent noise. On the subway, or the bus or the tram, I watch everything and everyone. Out here, I’m safe watching nothing, an anonymous cell in the city, letting it all wash over me.

Oblivious but accommodating to the stalls, hustlers, and general foot traffic around me, I walked up Bonvis Ave. to a little parkette I used to frequent when my people watching was more super than subterranean. I found my bench looking a bit older, a few more tags scrawled on the wobbly slats, and sat down like you would getting into your favourite armchair. I needed to carve out a little bubble of solitude, to process what the fuck had just happened. No one’s ever flipped it on me in quite that way, made me the object of such disconcerting study. I closed my eyes and laid down.

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There wasn’t a whole lot I could see, at first. She was sitting, a few rows down from where I stood watching the population of this tiny, transient community. At first, I took her as one of the deaf ones – white cords descending from her ears in stark contrast to her high-collared black coat. Long brown hair tangled up in a loose-weave scarf. Legs crossed, jeans, and a pair of beat-up black All-Stars tapping to a beat I couldn’t hear, could only watch. This in itself was something of an anomaly; most headphones I observe don’t make any outward movement – no finger-snapping or head-bopping – nothing to betray the fact that they’re listening to music.

This always struck me as… counterproductive? I guess music should make you want to move, if not dance outright. But these people, their placidity; they sit like statues, as if the little devices they’re plugged into aren’t emitting any sounds at all. Actually, I’ve done this myself. I’ve sat with silent buds in my ears, just to see what would happen. It didn’t really go well, though. Once I overheard someone on the train giving a tourist directions on the best way to get down to the lake from the west-end and I just had to chime in with a better route. I couldn’t help it. Still, it’s funny how people will talk and talk, right next to you, when they think you can’t, or don’t want to, hear them.

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It’s an interesting way to travel, public transit. It’s like the Frankenstein monster child of carpooling but instead of four in a sedan you have fifty in a bus. Every sneeze, every cell phone ring, every movement is amplified. Spotlit by everyone’s attention.  People do their best to ignore each other, but their darting eyes say otherwise. People fold into themselves, hunched into newspapers and books, desperate to create even a semblance of personal space. Unwilling to even acknowledge the inevitable scrutiny that surrounds the arrival of each new member of this strange, speeding, transient tribe. A few sit brazenly, daring anyone to approach. These ones usually take up two or three seats. They’ve made an unspoken claim to a piece of this temporary kingdom, expecting to pass their time in solitude while glowering fiercely at any who approach. It’s always fun on Saturday mornings to watch the Chinese and Korean grandmothers bat their outstretched legs off the seats so they can set down  the billion tons of rice and vegetables and what have you that they’ve been carrying up the road all morning. On their backs. 

Come to think of it, those old women are a force to be reckoned with on the subway. They’ll swat you out of the way and dart ahead of you, spry as you like, to steal the seat you were going for. Which you would have given them anyway. Obviously. Still, they don’t have to look so damn smug about it.

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I watched him chase her.

Through the dense branches, over the rough bark of the tree, she set a furious pace, whisking herself away just as it seemed he’d catch her. Relentlessly, he followed, dogged in his pursuit, leaping from limb to limb, trying to gain that extra foothold with which to intercept her. At times vertical and horizontal, he pursued her with a fierce, animal desire, trusting himself to keep a firm, steady pace and to keep his claws sunk deep in the tree’s wooden flesh.

It was the season, you see. Her scent was like a beacon, goading him into madness. His nostrils flared at the mere suggestion of her presence and his loins gave a familiar, persistent tug. When he saw her today he broke, he gave into the passion, the folly even, of this chase. But, he wonders, why does she run? Perhaps the excitement he exhibited when he first approached her made her apprehensive. Perhaps she feared the hungry look in his eyes or perhaps, as unlikely as it seems, she really had no idea what her smell awoke in the opposite sex this time of year.

She ran, and he followed.

Finally, she came to a clearing in the leaves, painted golden by the setting sun. She was slightly above him, twisting and turning to shake him off. Across the clearing, a gust of wind made clear a route of escape and she quickly leaped the short distance to safety. Annoyed, he geared up to make the same jump when the wind settled and the path became hidden once again. Undaunted, driven onwards by the most intense yearning, and unable to stop anyway, he leaped across the clearing; the chasm that stretched downwards towards his almost certain death. As he sailed through the air, like a leaf on the wind, he had time to ponder this chase. What motivated him to risk himself like this? He considered, but only briefly, whether his heedless running was a mistake, whether he should have muzzled his flaming passion. As the fear of death began making inroads on his mind he suddenly caught the tip of a swaying branch, which bobbed and buckled under his weight. It held, and he struggled upwards to keep up the chase.

He ran, and I watched.