This is a guest post by Anupa Mistry

I always listen to guitars during my morning commute and breathy female singers on the way home; aggressive music to wake me up, quiet voices to wind down. Only, the past few days I haven’t been listening at all thanks to an intrusive, relentless narrative inside my head. I can’t turn it off and I can’t overpower it, so catch me in the back corner of the bus, head resting on cold glass, ghostly streaks appearing and disappearing with every breath, staring, glazed, into the blank air in front of me. Like most commuters, I’m conscious enough—aside from peripheral vision clocking familiar sights until my stop—to intentionally avoid eye contact with other patrons.

Today, trying to eliminate my thoughts, I grip a pen over a sheet of paper. No reception, no ring tones, nobody blowing up my BBM—without 2010 distractions I become trapped in between the lines, I escape. Pages of imbalanced and scrawled letters, detailing thoughts, ideas, and confessions go by. Head still posted up against the icy glass, I take a break and make non-committal eye contact for a second of human contact on this impersonal, shitty commute. It’s a baby the colour of a latte, grin brimming with drool while squeezing the fingers of his young, blonde, kinda chubby mom.

Distracted by voices, I shift to the older man in the orange turban, nodding gravely while his burgundy-turban’d companion talks a lot, mostly with his hands, touching his forehead painfully and rolling his eyes to a gummy, grubby, graffiti’d heaven. “Those kids/this country/my fucking back!” I suppose he’s saying.

There’s a dude sitting exactly diagonal from me, writing something too. For the smooth, composed way my black, nearly dry ink slips across the page (jagged only when the streetcar hits bumps), his font is the complete opposite; the letters tall, wide, rakish. Like 10-year-old boys stepping up from carefully practiced printing to cursive, but also stressed and cramped like those too old and hasty to care.

He looks like a Columbine Boy and that’s probably not a very nice thing to say. By that I mean he’s wearing a trench coat and other ill-fitting clothes—all black everything—with dull, greasy, uncombed hair and a kinda salty look on his face, like don’t fuck with me. He’s what I (we?) would’ve made fun of back in high school and still mentally judge today. He plays magic cards probably. His hands are pudgy and boyish from growing up in front of a computer instead of playing basketball and picking fights.

Columbine Boy is writing a story with his preteen print into a worn pink Duo-Tang. From upside down and diagonal, I see the words “The Stone of Initiation,” and my suspicions are confirmed—total magic card shit, right? But I’m intrigued so I make no attempt to hide my curiosity and crane my neck to read some more. He notices, screwfaces, and turns away, continuing to write like a fever.

Really though, I’m intrigued because he has a prominent brow bone hanging over piercing Clearwater eyes. When he writes he looks brooding and bites the bottom left corner of a slightly feminine smile. He could stand to gain some weight and acquaint himself with a bottle of Head & Shoulders (pardon) but he’s got a day’s growth, long lashes and a well-defined jaw, Columbine Boy does. He could be someone else, I think, but he already is: my distraction.

Anupa Mistry is an editor at the Ashcan, contributor to Exclaim, and a cover song connoisseur. She also has a day job.

Check out my review over at the Ashcan.

Miguel Agawin is a recent graduate of Humber College's journalism program and currently works part-time as the Creative Adviser for the Humber Et Cetera student newspaper.

This is a guest post by Elliott Fienberg

How many times have you got on the subway and noticed coffee stains on the ground, or even worse on the seats?

I look at the mess people have made and wonder how fellow commuters can be so dumb. Other times I've seen people rest their coffee cups right on the seats and then I mutter to myself about how the apocalypse is near. I've always vowed never to be one of these idiots.

On a separate note, I, like many other people have trouble waking up in the morning. And when you're running late, there's no time to sit at the table and drink a nice hot cup like that guy in the Folgers commercials.

A few weeks ago during my morning routine, I got the genius idea to make coffee and take it in a paper cup for my commute. But the first time I tried was also my last because I figured out first hand why there's so many coffee stains on the subways.

If you've ever been on the Bloor line you know that any given time, the trains are always crowded. So you can imagine that in the morning I am basically Kramer going to work on Wall Street.

So everything was fine until I had to get out. As I made my way to the doors, I tried to pass some jerk wearing a backpack when another man crossed my path. The cup dropped like a fumbled pass in the Grey Cup as I yelled, 'nooooo'.

As the viscous Colombian gold flowed on the floor, it reached some poor bloke's pant legs. As it soaked around his ankles, my self-esteem plummeted by the nanosecond. I kept trying to say I'm sorry and I even added some more apologies from outside the train before it took off again. Hey, a Canadian can never apologize enough, right?

So I learned a good lesson that morning: if you want to wake up twenty minutes earlier, just bring a cup of coffee on a crowded subway one morning. Forget using life's ambitions, images of success, or the pressures of supporting a family to get you out of bed; the terror of repeatedly seeing someone whom you spilled coffee on will rip you from the beneath the warm covers any day of the week.

Elliott Fienberg writes music and blogs under the guise of Mr. Tunes. Check out his site or download to his latest release, "Nagano Car Rental".

This is a guest post by Sarah Phillips

your cherry red upholstery
stainless steel handrails.

(achoo!)

body odour – squishy – backpacks – transfers – delays – “ * #@* !,that’ s my foot” –
have to pee – crazy drivers

book reading – seat getting – “ going against traffic” – seats for seniors –
“collector will be back shortly please pay fare and go through” – nutso riders

goodbye road rage, snow tires, parking, (Rob Ford?!)
hello ttc ♥.

Sarah Phillips is a freelance writer and works in marketing. She recently gave up her car to ride the rocket to work everyday. She is planning to get full use out of her first Metropass this November.

Bloor Station is the main artery of the Toronto Transit Commission. It connects the subway’s major lines and contains one of the few and putrid washrooms on the system. It doesn’t display any murals (College Station) or sculptures (Museum Station) to distract commuters from the filth caked onto its walls and platforms. It’s the busiest station in the city with an estimated 205,500 daily passengers – all leaving their mark on the worn stop.

Last week, at a particularly vulnerable moment, I encountered a message on a platform wall that, at the time, could only be interpreted as an omen. In faint childish writing, these words appeared: “David Look Up.” It was a personalized message, just for me, or one of the thousands of other Davids in the city. Either way, I felt connected to a higher power. I wanted to kiss the busker playing guitar next to me. But first I had to obey the message. I looked up only to find more writing: “Gross”. That’s it – one disappointing word with an arrow next to it pointing up. The initial luster of the experience began to fade. I looked up again, expecting minor prophecy, or at least, amusing smut. Instead, I found what looked like fungus coming out of the ceiling.

It was gross, but I was played like so many Davids before me. I no longer believe in anything.

Update: Upon closer inspection, I found out the message is “Don’t Look Up,” which makes the experience less personal and more demeaning.

This is a new series of writing and images inspired by experiences on the Toronto Transit Commission. The city’s underfunded and overworked system has become a defining issue in the current mayoral race. The TTC is hurting bad. It has suffered from stronger than usual commuter backlash during the last year. It brands itself as “The Better Way.” It’s the only way for many people in this sprawled city. And most of us daily riders have a love/hate relationship with the system we depend on, but are so often let down by. This series will showcase this ambivalence through the works of talented writers and artists I know and admire. Enjoy!

Photo by Easternblot

Safety patrollers and milk monitors. During the sixth grade at Denlow Public School in Toronto, students were assigned one of these duties to carry out during lunch and after school.  Safety patrollers – with their fluorescent construction vests, military posture, and unparalleled responsibility – were the envy of every skid-marked child on the playground. They ensured students and parents crossed the street without tragic incident. It was a big task for a tyke.

If an elderly man is mugged on a full subway car, or a homeless man lies dying in a puddle of blood, onlookers are more likely to take a cell phone video than jump to assistance.

The “bystander effect,” the inaction of individuals to provide help to someone in need, is being debated this week after a 79-year-old man’s wallet was snatched on the TTC as two-dozen people apparently shrugged their shoulders. In a more alarming incident that occurred last Sunday morning in New York, about 20 people strolled by a homeless person who had been stabbed after attempting to break up a dispute.

This year's Hot Docs looks like a healthy smorgasbord of global life. The Story of Furious Pete - about an anorexic student turned bodybuilder-cum-competitive eater - will be featured in the Canadian Spectrum program at the festival. I wrote an article on Pete Czerwinski a couple of years ago for the Toronto Sun. I spent an hour at his house where he told his Oprah-worthy story and posed with one of his trophies for being one of the world's top face stuffers. Czerwinski is affable, candid, and eloquently spoken. This should be an entertaining and tender film. Check out the article in pdf and watch the trailer here: