Monday, March 9, 2015

Metro Musings, contd.

One never knows what a Metro ride can offer.  While frantic scrambling goes on at the top of the managerial chain, lamentable and sad confusion over who is to run the country's second largest under/overground train system, passengers take what pleasure they can in the offbeat moments during a trip when the greatest mystery may be whether they will get to their destination without mishap. Sitting across the aisle from me on a crossing from Virginia into the District recently was a very distinctively dressed gentleman in a riotous patchwork costume, jacket and trousers, the epitome of creative fashion daringly applied. An original!
It helped that he had a totally free head of white hair, Afro style, and sat plugged into music that kept his multicolored shoes bouncing along in tune to  rhythms only he could hear. He carried a backpack with appliqués, much like his suit; both were composed of dozens, if not hundreds, of different textures and textiles in roughly square shapes and patterns. There was, in addition, a sort of white fur trim around the cuffs. It obviously had been custom made, a miraculous invention. Was he an actor trying out for a part or just someone on a roll? He was most definitely 'comfortable in his own skin' as the expression goes, a nonconformist in a city of buttoned-down blue two-piece suits, joyous and happily unselfconscious in his selectively original mode..

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