An Ode to Public Transport

In a Station of the Metro

A. took this photo when he came to visit me during the weeklong vacation I had for Toussaint. It’s a photo I return to often: not only because it is beautiful—the ceiling wet with colored light, the compositional spiral, the long, leading lines—but also because there is a love I feel towards the Paris metro (and the Lyon metro, and the NYC subway, and the BART for that matter, despite my total inability to navigate that one…) which, unlike so many other oft-romanticized things, has remained un-ruined by my exposure to it.

Even on early mornings in Lyon when the station was ineffably crowded, made humid by body heat and October rain, even though that crowd was unsmiling, unyielding, smelled like mothballs, mildew, cigarettes, perfume—even on days (most days) when I was over-tired, and on days (all days) I missed A. so much it brought meaning to the biblical wailing and gnashing of teeth—I still loved the metro.

At Saxe Gambetta, the station less than a block from where I stayed in Guillotière, there was a locksmith (or was it shoe repair? I looked it up: it was shoes and keys) and a viennoiserie where I could get a croissant (paper bag, small, brown) and an espresso (paper cup, small, white) for €1.50.

An aside: I’ve heard before that the French are somewhat snobbish about croissants abroad. Who can blame them? I feel a bottomless disappointment towards every over-priced croissant I’ve bought stateside after having tasted the flaky, buttery, simplistic salvation of a metro-station croissant that cost me less than…see? I can’t even come up with something to put here. What in the US can you buy for less than a dollar? Not a croissant. And certainly not a good one.

I digress.

Something else I miss: on the metro, there was a feeling of loneliness and togetherness all at once. Commuting was a contact sport. We may never have looked one another in the eye, but we had no choice but to brace ourselves against each other—to lean on the bodies of strangers as the train lurched forward and we fought to find our collective footing, keep hold of our purses, our groceries, our dripping umbrellas.

It was anonymity. It was ultimate freedom. There was nowhere I couldn’t get with a train ride and ten minutes or so of walking. And so in cities where there is such a thing as functional public transportation, it feels while I am there like the city is mine, or at the very least, that I am some small piece of it. A platelet of blood in the veins, a clot in the station, a drifting, impermanent part of something larger and warmer—alive.

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A note here to thank A. for this taking the photos in this post. In my four months in France, I never photographed the metro. But A. did, and he did so beautifully.

A note of gratitude also for our trusty Olympus mju-ii , a point-and-shoot 35mm so effortlessly excellent we bought two.