From the first moment, pulling open the heavy metal gate that seals off the front patio where the cars are parked. A little kid yelling. Walking down the street and then down the hill seeing people the entire way. Eyes glancing, watching, observing. Up the stairs into the Metrorrey. Packed so full of faces, noses, arms, legs, torsos, breasts, thighs and every second more packed. Drowning in flesh and hairstyles and biceps and labels and brandnames and perfumes and ballcaps and cellphone ringtones and neon colors Made in China and the eerie music played over the speakers, the Andean pipe music that creeps people out worldwide. Standing and watching and waiting and forced to examine every last decision of every last person. The old woman in her polka-dotted nylon shirt who pushes her way into the already full train car, elbowing a twentysomething fresa girl and physically moving her out of the way so she can reach around her and grab the pole for balance. Another woman dashing to make it into the train I just left and I stop and watch her, people streaming by me on both sides, just to see if she'll make it.

Entertain thoughts of writing one of these people every day, clearly fiction then, obviously imagining. Walking down the stairs from the Metro above ground platform down to the sidewalk to wait in line to transfer to the bus. Another woman elbows past me down the aisle to grab a pole for balance. As the bus pulls away, the same boy from yesterday with his hair styled back into the mullet-mohawk and a long tuft of frizzy blonde hair sticking out of the back. His fuzz still there blowing behind him as he mutters quietly to himself, looking upset about missing the bus. The next one will be a long wait, see.

It's impossible to know what anyone is thinking by looking at them. Especially when that other person is not even thinking in this language I am using to write. But feelings are not in any language, I guess. Feelings like how the woman in front of me must have felt when the bus rounded a particularly sharp turn and my body, my pelvis slammed into her. Feelings. The bus trundled and rocked along, I wondering if I had a camera if I could look at it like I was looking at the pictures, but with the flash turned off, and secretly snatch a photo of the young man sitting in front of me, his head halfway out the little plastic slide-open window, staring wistfully at something invisible. Barely made it off the bus and hurried across the little cobblestone crosswalk and into the traffic circle. (Crossing a "cobblestone crosswalk" sounds so typical, so traditional, so México Profundo and so far from another true statement: crossing a ten lane highway with six lanes going under and four going over, anchored by a traffic circle.) Two rotund woman, both short of stature, in yellow uniforms swept the side of the road around the traffic circle, sweeping up dust and flowers and leaves.

And I, hurrying off to work, sleepcrusted eyes and worn down and glad not to be driving in a lonely compartment separated from everyone else, equally isolated whether on a twenty-two lane highway or a no-lane side street in my own neighborhood.

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