Random moments. Enduring memories.

I am sitting on a train headed through downtown LA trying to avoid eye contact with the men selling water and candy. They are determined, and rightly so, as they try to scrounge some form of income for the day. Fear instilled in me by stereotyping prompts me to keep my eyes down and mouth shut, my Australian accent is hardly inconspicuous. I am starting to think we are the only tourists that have chosen the train as their mode of transport and start to wonder what is written in the travel guides we didn’t bother to read.

We’ve just stopped and an elderly couple have hopped on the train. The doors close and I imagine the couple are probably enjoying the relief you get when you finally sit down and put the rest of the journey in the hands of the driver. But relief is brief as the elderly woman cries to her husband, “Where’s the bag?” But by just looking at her husband she and I know the answer. The doors close that instant and we slowly start to pull away at a mocking pace. Slow enough that if the doors were open one could merely step off. There is nothing they can do and the train starts to speed up headed for the next stop. Once again I cast my eyes over to the couple and the elderly woman has her face in her hands. She can’t even look at her husband. The bag is gone. Of course. Whoever saw it at the station would pick it up. It’s just human nature. But why? Why do we assume that it will be stolen? When did having your own back and no one else’s become a means of living?

You only have to spend a couple of days catching the train outside of LA’s “glamorous” Hollywood to realise that people will do anything to survive in the city of hopes and dreams. It’s no wonder with 38% of the population living in ‘economic hardship’ and 17.5% living under the federal poverty limit.

But then, I wonder, what makes the couple get off at the next stop and turn back to where their bag was left? Hope. A belief that just maybe there is still space for the existence of community and one’s ability to look out for others. The couple hops off the train and I pray a silent prayer that the bag is there when they return.
I’ll never know but I’d like to think that they found the bag. Though I can’t help but picture a man with a bag of water bottles heading home early, having already collected his days pay.