Underlined reflections from an old notebook (Part 1)

My journey to work is significantly shorter and more crowded than it was six months ago. I travel into the city now, and I see different faces everyday. On the train out to Essex the same approximate group would occupy the same seats on the same carriage, forming a kind of silent, mobile community. To those others on the first eastbound carriage, if they registered my presence at all, I was recognisable as the guy in the brown shoes who scribbled furiously in a red plush notebook. It was bile, most of it, inspiration came rarely, on occasion no words would come at all - the pen hovered just above the page and there was something altogether ouija about it.

Nowadays, most days, I stand all the way in to Liverpool Street. It's no hardship, of course, but I am denied the luxury of scribbling. I rediscovered the plush notebook though, sifting through a disused messenger bag in search of sunglasses. And I discovered that semi-automatic writing is about as useful as ouija.

These fragments I have shored against my ruin...