Liner Notes

DSC #5: Alexi Murdoch “Wait”

Pacing up and down is probably not the best way to appear casual. One should ideally be reading the paper or a book at some cafe sipping coffee and absentmindedly picking at a croissant. But the seats in the nearby cafe have all been taken up and it’s too cold to sit outside and still be able to project the image of an insouciant morning.

Gare de Lyon. March, 2008.

The mechanical flipping of the arrival board updating itself made me look up. It would probably have been a good idea to ask exactly what time he will reach and where he will be coming from but I was too excited on the phone yesterday to bother with details like that. I’m still early but the butterflies have already gathered at that spot in my stomach, rendering me physically useless. The rhythmic flipping of the arrival board, together with the beginning notes of an impending announcement, also distracts me from anything I’m thinking about.

I should probably also scout out a good meeting place. This place is cavernously huge! There are two major areas in the Gare de Lyon – the international and the domestic but the place is so densely packed with people with big ass luggages, screaming children, people yelling on their mobiles, or frantically waving at someone getting on/off the trains, hordes of tourists blocking every possible way that it’s very easy to miss each other. I look around at the people standing around alone with their masks of inscrutability and wonder what they are thinking about. Are they happy to leave this place, waiting anxiously for the train or praying that they don’t miss that someone who had braved the traffic just to say bye? Standing at the edge of it all (just maybe 2m before it’d be too cold), it’s interesting to watch people come and go. Train stations are places of transit and not many would want to spend a morning here, but unlike the airport with its big, almost sterile spaces, you get to see the joys, tears, frenzies, anxieties, sadness all mashed up in the urgency and chaos of the here and now. It’s in your face and very palpable. One can easily get swept up in this mass display of emotions.

My stomach is hurting like crazy; the millions of butterflies fluttering around are pulling me apart inside. I walk outside for a cigarette; I need to calm down. It’s even more chaotic outside. Cars stopping haphazardly to pick up or drop off their human loads, luggage hauled up and down the pavements and the cacophony of screeching car wheels, horns, luggage wheels and heels on cobblestones is not one easily forgotten. The façade of the train station stands almost fragile with its intricate carved figurines while its giant clock tower lends a certain stateliness and brevity amidst the madness that goes on.

It’s now 12:22pm. I had better dive back in and pray that we don’t miss each other. I have been waiting for 9 months, 8 days and 10 hours now.