I love random input

All too often, the train ride to work makes me just want to post to childfree more. But just as often, the train ride throws me some random goodies. Normally, they're for BooCompany, because we have Siemens and ex-Siemens offices down our line.

Today, though, I got something for MM: I got a dancer!

He was sitting across from me in a section of seats arranged like in the London tube instead of those little compartments-of-four so annoyingly, wastefully popular with public transport in Germany. I was sitting there, reading a magazine, and when I looked up, there were those large, luminous if dark eyes staring at me from the face of a prim bloke of about 45*. Rather camp thing, at that. I gave him a nasty Look along the lines of 'Hey you haven't you ever seen a short squat geek slouch in a train reading a magazine?' but there was something about the way he held his neck that made me look again, and then I noticed how consciously he sat there, how straight and strangely symmetrical even though he did not, as such, do the same thing with his left and right arm and leg? I don't know how else to describe it - he was aligned, extremely present in his body which moved as if under complete control.

As he'd stared first**, I felt free to coolly observe him from behind my magazine - the way he sat very still in his seat, the way he moved his head to look at people, the posture, the hands, the unusual way he held his feet, the rather odd, somewhat heeled shoes he was wearing. I concluded he had to be a dancer or something similar who used the slightest nuance of his body for expression while peope were watching - classical ballet, modern dance, at a crunch a professional or competitive ballroom dancer, or perhaps flamenco? Tango? Something like that, on a professional level? If I'd been pressed for a bet, I think that after seeing him get out and walk away, straight and proud if utterly casual, I'd opt for flamenco with a classical background.

Observing the bloke, I was of course reminded of my ghostly ballet dancer charrie in MM, homeless_ghost***, who I always claim to have more control about how solid he is, and about what he can do even as a ghost because he remembers his body so very well, every muscle, every sinew, ever movement, that he simply assumed his body would do what it had always done, even though his body was no longer there? That bloke today in the train struck me as a point in favour for that interpretation - observing him, it struck me how totally his body was subject to his will, an instrument for what he wanted to say, like a cello would be to a cellist? The spirit that moved the body was completely concentrated and focused on that well-kept, well-known tool. A focus so strong you might believe it could still carry on after the tool was, in fact, broken and discarded.-

- And on the way home from work, as the trains were generous today, I got a genuine Thai she-male**** and a rather good copy of my MM NPC Maude Temminck...


* for a dancer, that means about 10 years past the sell-by date
** and no, I don't have an explanation why he looked at me - perhaps he found me interesting to observe, so completely different, or he was avoiding to look at somebody else?
*** whee for random journals from defunct RPGs that more or less mirror the active character journals from MM, which are of course on GJ
**** hir face and figure were perfect, but the voice and the hands gave hir away