About, on the topic and reflecting on.

Hey! I am Marianne, and I take this strange train to places. I haven't done that for almost two years. What is it?

Tube, Metro, Subway, Banana, ちかてつ地下鉄, metropolitan, T-bana, S-bahn, s-tog and more of the same, all over the worlds big cities.

I need to say it. I love it. LOVE IT. Taking the Tunnelbana from my station "Svedmyra" to my therapy "Rådmansgatan" takes me 20 minutes, and I'd say it's twenty minutes of bliss.

Finally I get to do the thing I like the best. Watch people going on with their lives. Listen to people talking on the phone. Trying to figure out what important thing the people around me are doing on their smart phones. (are they really smart?)

Thinking about the episode of Black Mirror (season 3 episode 1, "each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality." - Wikipedia) where each individual give others ratings on the way they behave, talk, smile etc. The higher score the better life you'll get. Anyway, watch it if you want to see something very scary that could be in our immediate future.

I can see people who get in to the carriage with determination. Where is a free seat? Where do I stand the best, where is something to hold on to? How do I avoid contact with other individuals. Direct contact, even worse!

Then somehow, they drift away someplace, and for a moment or two, they stand or sit there, looking alone and a bit stand-offish. You know the way that looks right? And then, suddenly they have their smart-phone in their hands. At first, they look at it, as to say, where did you come from. And then, turning it on, and maybe starting a game of something. A puzzle, a word-game with a friend far away. Surfing the web, replying to mail, texts (sms) or even, sometimes, even take a phone-call from someone.

"I am on the tube, where are you? Oh. Okay."

Same sentence each time. You'll let the person on the other end know for certain where you are. There is a rule for that. Often, they also mention the station the train is about to stop on, even if they're not getting of the train there. It's important to people of today, to know where others are. Our children or parents, our friends.. We do like to know what they're up to at any given time of the day.

Headphones. Is it music, or a podcast, radio, a book read for you, right in to your ear, in private. The privacy of the listening is the key. The boundary is sharp, do not disturb, like a sign outside the hotel room. I see the people who completely isolate themselves, with having the vision impaired by the mobile, doing whatever they're doing, while having the headphones on. They wont look up, look around, seeing or hearing anything else but their own world. It's like leaving home without being somewhere else. It's just a mean to an end. Going from A to B without meeting the world, the reality, and maybe get a moment or two of peace and quiet from the daily grind of stress and business, family, friends..

Some people speak to their friend, or acquaintance, a son or a daughter. And just as often, I see them talking for a bit, and then suddenly their both on their phones again. It is more important to get that high score, or check the news, or just look at it. Maybe look up that show that I was on for three, maybe five years ago, with that comedian that I can't really remember the name of, I better Google, or Siri, it up. Right now. It just has to be done, because if I can't remember, it might never had happened.

I'll just take a photo of me going to work, I have such funny hair today! Got to share it on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter...oh and Tumblr too. Hell, I even post it on Tinder, it can't be worse than my previous photo.

Oh, hang on, look at that dude! He is just standing there. Got to get a quick picture of him!

And then me, who is back from the grave, so to speak. I like to talk to people. I am highly social when I am around people. Any people at all. I get high off it, just saying a few words, and getting something back. A smile, a curious question, a dog who jumps up in my lap and the dog-owners shame, and then laughter when they see that it's okay. (that happened last week..the cutest dog I've ever seen!! Okay, got to say it. It was a black/brown mix of a poodle and a bichon bolognese, and the fur was to die for, it felt like one of these days soft toy animals, but with even softer and thicker hair... oh gorgeous, I want one..!)

The beggars come by, looking so sad and desperate, and people feel so bad that they can't look at them. Or maybe they don't even see them. Even if I wanted to give them money, I do not have any cash. Who has cash these days? In my monthly budget, I have money for them. I have very little money, but it makes me feel good, to give to someone else. But now as I travel the world (or at least my own city) there are too many, I don't know how to act or think about them anymore. I try to smile at least, look them into their eyes, but what good is that, apart from me breathing a bit easier, thinking that at least I am seeing them, acknowledging them. Well, I bet they don't care at all. They're freezing. They are starving. They are in this strange country, and they're not getting enough money to send back home anymore. People have stopped giving, and perhaps even caring. Too many, and in such a short space of time... We didn't really have any beggars on our streets five, six years ago. it was a big to-do when they first started to show up. People were rallying to help out, news was full of journalists who went out to their camps and wrote about it, big articles shown on the front pages of the papers. Now, sometimes a journo will cover how filthy the camps are, how they have to be evacuated again, to find a new place to fuck up, make dirty and scary for the people who want to take walks and who wont go near, because of the fear and the filth of not having toilets, running water, trash-baskets, heat... It's a dark and scary world today.

But oh, how I love it. I am finally a part of it all. I can sit in my seat and let the world shower over me. I'll stop myself from doing the automatic movements of taking my phone out. Or reading the free papers, or reading my Kindle. I just want to be there, in the moment, soaking it up, like the sun on the holiday.

Yes! I am back, here me, not roar exactly, just... go meow, I like it! I like it a lot!