train_tracks I can go for months on end, especially in winter, when all I do on the trek across the city and back again each day, is keep my nose in a book. The commute is all about how much more I can absorb of the world on the page. I don't notice the man with the ipod and suit and Crumpler bag who should be told the earring doesn't work anymore. I don't smile at the young kid who stands in the same place on the train every morning surreptitiously listening to his slightly older sister's conversation with her best friend (boys, songs, jogging). I try not to notice how much room men wearing suits take up on train seats (don't they take up enough space in the world already?) and how they don't move an inch to assist others, especially women, to get past them as the train pulls up to stations along the way.

But then there are weeks where I just watch. Watch what people wear, how they open the door, who they open the door for, how they lean into each other to whisper or giggle or confide, who they watch in the reflections, how they sit, what they say on their mobile phones, and, of course, what they read.

Currently, the eastern suburbs are reading quite widely. There was a young girl, in a hopeful summer dress on a still cold day, reading that beautiful, lyrical story One Hundred Years of Solitude. A man in a creased suit with a beautiful leather satchel was finishing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, perhaps in anticipation of the third in the series being released this month. A woman, who I will call a baby boomer, was reading Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and a slightly younger woman in a very smart charcoal skirt suit, pink satin shirt and black slingback heels was reading The Women in Black, the re-issue of Madeleine St John's lovely tale of women in Sydney in 1950s fashion retail. On a journey home, another woman, slightly frazzled it seemed, was lost in Diana Gabaldon's latest An Echo In The Bone. And a dad, with his three year old girl in tow, was reading the classic Rosie's Walk. She sat quietly, transfixed, until he finished the last page and then she laughed loudly. 'Again, dad. Read it again!' And he did, making, or allowing, our collective commute that afternoon to be one of delight and eagerness as the crowded train, everyone of us, openly watched the little girl's face wrinkle in concentration, her lips slightly moving as her father pointed to pictures and words, and then beam as she demanded again, four times in all, that he read it again.