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«About the moments lost and those found between the ones that might be both, or maybe neither. (Yes, this is a reused title, but it means something very different today...) | Front | pretty elaborately simple things... »

October 07, 2004
About a very subtle and soft ring of dust, drawn onto an index finger using a subway train, ready to leave the station. As well as the idea of genetic code left on the glass... and about eating dust. He stood on the platform for a little while, staring at the back lights of the train disappearing into the tunnel. The flow of warm air dragged by the last car gave him a last pat on the back, there was a screech generated by metal wheels on metal tracks, then something called silence: The noise of the air conditioning, the whispers of a couple passing by, the sound of a metal buckle hitting another metal buckle, step after step after step. Somebody was wearing one of those buckled leather jackets. Those who had arrived with the train were now leaving the station. He looked at his hands. At the very tip of his indexfinger was a black circle. A black circle drawn with dust. Just minutes ago he used the train window to draw a circle onto his index finger. A gigantic train, several cars, packed with people, now moving farther and farther away from him had been used to be a special device to draw a tiny circle of dust onto his finger. The circle was not perfect, of course. It was actually only approximately a circle. But wow. Tons of steel, people, glass, engines, electricity, light, a schedule. A tiny, shy ring of dust. Wow... He opened the palm of his other hand and tried to draw a little heart. It almost worked. Meanwhile, a few stations away, the outside of the train rushed by at the same speed, with the same noise, on the same schedule. The train utterly unimpressed by the dust given away by the window. Completely ignorant to the shape shape on the window where a layer of dust had been replaced by a thinnest layer of water repellent DNA carrying material. One could, maybe, from a very specific angle, from a very particular seat, in this very particular last car of the train. One could maybe see a very specific message now. The train would soon leave the tunnel. Then the light of the city would play in special ways with the symbol on the glass... If it rained, the water of the rain would avoid the shape. There would be twirls and drops and other constellation of water, but the shape itself would remain untouched. He sat down in the wrong end of the platform and waited for the train going into the opposite direction. Soon he and the circle on his index finger would rush through a tunnel, made out of other intentions, by people long gone, who might somehow be contained in the water that will not enter the symbol, at least not for a little while. At least not for a little while... It would be perceived as dumb if he licked the ring off his index finger. Yet on the other hand it was completely normal for him to inhale the exactly same kind of dust, day in day out, in a much less meaningful way. Why is that?