Today I took a hot skytrain from work to home, agressively schlepping my way onto the car in front of all the other overheated and overworked office folk who populate burrard station. Ended up reaching around one person to delicately touch my fingers to the bar and hope against hope that I don’t fall when we hit the wobbly part of the line between Main and Stadium. I found myself staring squarely into the neck stubble of a brown man with salt and pepper hair. each hair was individually colored in one of three shades: white, black, and brown, and none of the ones on his neck were more than 4 mm in length. Clearly, he had recently had a hair cut. He also had large pores dotting his neck, little open mouths sucking in the air.

Like me, he had the essential uniform of a transit rider, a pair of white wires extending from small globes in his ears. These wires inevitably attach the head of the transit rider to his or her document carrier, where a small device transmits distracting sounds, which, in combination and at an appropriate volume, usually sounds like music to the listener.

Looking around the train I noticed most of us had control over our aural environment, if not our nasal one. We had white wires protruding from our ears. It was surreal. Sure, a few riders have chosen a human variant of the same device called “friend” or “bus buddy”, or use cellular telephones to contact disembodied but familiar voices who share their angst about their bosses, filing systems, and the erroneous shipment of hamsters when rats were perfectly fine for scientific testing.

Those of us who choose not to impose our thoughts on a captive audience follow a couple simple rules: Avoid Eye Contact at all times, and Avoid dancing like they do in the IPod commercials no matter how good that rendition of “Bless Your Beautiful Hide” is. I also try to avoid crying at sentimental Irish songs or heartfelt Indie Rock about disappointment and separation – it makes people uncomfortable.

Which is an odd way of explaining that I think we are increasingly distant from each other, in our own little bubbles of thought as we turn our expression increasingly inwards until we turn ourselves inside out. I yearn for a way to burst from this, but it is hot and I really just want to have a strawberry milkshake with whipped cream on top and chocolate shavings.