sketching 2

I didn't stop to stare and I certainly didn't stop to take a picture. I was too busy hurrying to my train. so all you get is a sketch of him.

It was around 10:45 at the train station. a little more than an hour before the last train heading into Tokyo and a little more that and hour and a half before the last train traveled out. I poured out of the bus, surrounded businessmen (I saw one woman) from companies like IBM, Fujitsu, NTT, and the techno type. If this particular businessman had been standing he probably wouldn't have caught my eye. but he sat, absorbed in his folder of papers on a bench, under a tree, by the bus stop.

he sat with his legs crossed, one ankle over the other knee, forming a nest for his papers. He wrote carefully and emphatically in ink, his strokes were neat and his characters clean. His hair cut, build and age were typical of 90% of the bus goers but what made him stand out was his naked foot. suspended in air, so misplaced from the rest of his image that it seemed almost diconnected from the ankle resting on the grey suited knee. floating not so far above its business style shoed counterpart. the empty shoe sat close by, quiet estranged from its naked twin and the busy pen on paper.

and I don't know what he wrote. even if I had paused for a second or looked over his shoulder, studying him, for half an hour, I would not have known what magic poured from that pen. While it looked like a folder full of figures and business matters, I choose not to believe that this dedicated scribbler choose to use the moments between 10:40pm and 10:50pm continuing his working toils. I choose to believe that, akin to urgent napkin poems and manifestos, this white collar worker suddenly became overwhelmed and had no choice but to pour his mind onto paper. he had no choice but to shape his world into lines of ink, neat and unsmeared as they were.

nut whether it was of an unrequitable desire, a moment of beauty, or a instance of disbelief, I shall never know. whether it was a hastily written invitation that he will slip into a lovers pocket or re-written mantra of compassion and strenth, I can only guess.

so I turn the image to you. a businessman, wearing a fitted suit, jacket and all except for naked foot balancing on his knee. he sits pouring over a simple paper folder of pages. he writes in pen and does not look up as the world pours by.