and I ran onto something, which I could have sworn was everything.
So, recently. I've been getting the Metro to work, rather than apparating. Why? Well, it's not my usual, toaster obsessed, curiosity about the Muggle world reasoning. Far from it. It's the same reason I get used to get the train to Hogwarts at the beginning of the year.
I can think there. Really think. That deep underground, that cut off from the world, all one can do is absorb yourself in yourself, or the pettyness of strangers. Watching people has never appealed to me, but either way, a trip on the Metro teaches you something about humanity that nothing else can. It doesn't teach you much about external humanity, about the way people act to each other, because they're rude and sullen (or rude and annoying, in the case of tourists), quite probably because they're all too busy, wrapped up in their internal humanity. All thinking, all in their own world, whether they're reading or doing a crossword or whatever. Mainly, doing as I do, doing what so many people do for no apparent reason. Looking out the window. Into a dark, empty tunnel wooshing past. Why on earth would anyone want to do that?
Because they just think. It's the most serene place in the world, for something full of people and stinking like diesel. Because you make that effort to detatch yourself from the world. Not many people talk on a Metro train, unless they're tourists. They read their papers, read their books, do a puzzle, get inside themselves.
Or, as I do, I try to find, every morning, the part of humanity that only lives in me and not in the outside world. Something worth living for. Because that, as Dostoyevsky says, is living. And I do. They might be things in the outside world, but my feelings towards them are the real purpose.
And this is why I do it. The best place to think about the world is away from it. The best place to think about yourself is in somewhere full of people.
Philosophy moment over.
Mathematical practicalities here we come.
a) I have a lot to think about. Mainly involving Nick. Did I do something wrong? Was I cheating? ...I just hope he knows why I acted how I did. I hope I do. When I'm on my own, he's the person I worry about.
b) Work. Is...less lonely now, they've given me a trainee to teach. She's nice enough, quiet, nervous sort. How I imagine a mathematician, to be honest. She painstakingly counts out her grapes at lunch. I guess I've had too much contact with human beings to be one of those mathematicians. Well...to that extent.
c) Note to self about the Metro: get off a stop later and come back, as you will only end up going in that oh-so-familiar bistro after a particularly bad day.
d) which brings me to the worst of my realities. I am scared for people. Genuinely scared. I feel safe, but it doesn't stop that shudder of fear every time Britain makes the front pages in our newspapers. It makes me angry when people here are determined to believe it won't effect them in the slightest. How am I supposed to answer that?
I'll write to them. Only solution, really.
Nick,
How are you? I hope...somehow, you feel better, for whatever reason. I do, which I can't quite explain. I'm still terrified for people, I'm still worried, I'm still...on the whole lonely, I still can't deal with the fact she's gone, and I still miss you in person terribly, but I feel just a bit more at peace with it all. So I hope you've got somewhere similar or something.
Abime.
I know people are going to think I'm not making any sense. But to me, it makes perfect sense. I do quite like going on public transport. I always thought this was the sort of thing you were supposed to hate, but apparently, I quite like it. For multiple reasons I might list if you ask.
What I do hate, though, is the new nightclub across the street which I suspect is not a nightclub at all. Each to their own and all, but when it means someone-anonymous-and-drunk throwing up on our steps? Not so nice.
And that's the mundane goings on of my life. Feel free not to care.