A Journey

If you catch the tram after the workers have left for the day then you might glimpse another side of the city ...

Pre-departure you watch, holding your breath, as an old man with crutches scales the steps of the tram as if they are Everest, his hand on the arm of the man standing below.

You might wonder what drives him to get out of bed and dress in his suit and the tie ... where he is going and will someone else help him off when he reaches 'there', if you leave before him.

Two stops on you see a man pushing two bikes and wonder why.

There's the old woman at the top of the stairs to her house, framed in her doorway wearing an apron, she carries a metal kettle in her right hand ... she watches the man pushing the bicycles pass by. I don't know if they greeted each other ...

Further on there was a younger woman scrubbing her doorstep.

A young mother wearing a headscarf is helped by a blonde wearing jeans, who reaches down with a smile and lifts the baby's pushchair up the steps of the tram.

What defines them, who are they to themselves ...

I'm curious because I have been in this strange limbo land for almost a year, not quite arriving ... having left other places.

Perhaps it's like cleansing your palate; a break between countries, between times, between selves ... and then you begin again.