Possibilities of a man on a bicycle

While driving today, I drove past a man on a bicycle pedalling uphill. He was more hunched than short, more tawny than dark, more care-worn than old. In other words, the kind of guy that we generally pass by every day without giving much of a thought about, other than to dismiss as another ageing labourer.

And I found myself doing the thing I feel inspired to do every now and then - to capture passing images of people and wonder what their stories are. Well, spinning their stories may be more like it.

He may be an unremarkable man leading an unremarkable life in an unremarkable place.

He could be a foreigner who came here to work and just never went back. His wife may have long given up writing to him and went to another city to work herself.

He could be wearing that dull brown t-shirt to cover the intricately interweaving tattoos that decorate the back and the front of his body. If you looked carefully (and if he would ever show them to you), you would spot an occasional symbol in the mosaic of tattoos that you might not recognise fully but would put discomfort in your heart that you could not place.

Or to cover the deep purple grooves that form angry canyons up and down his back. The scars are clearly old but they still scream of a time that nearly took his life. He never tells anyone how he got them.

Maybe he rides that bicycle at 5pm to his third home of the day. It could be a void deck where he tells stories to passing children. It could be the coffee shop where they tolerate him and sometimes even give him food. It could be the seaside where he waits for sundown to start preying on lone beach goers and couples caught unaware, dragged into the filthy surf by silent hands where the last thing they will ever see is the dim glow of unnatural eyes in the murky water. It could be the lush living room of a lone expatriate who did not notice the dark but benign shadow that slipped in through the open window, nor the bicycle that lies propped up against the wall beneath the window - the unseen guest wanting nothing more than a place to rest for the night.

He could be a reflection of a man in a different land, pedalling up a different hill, passing by different scenery. Maybe the man does not see the cars driving around him nor the condominiums lining his route, but sees the familiar acres of farmland he proudly owns, unaware that he is seen a thousand miles from where he is. Maybe a careless driver who heads, terrified, right into the man and his bicycle will hit nothing but a holographic pool of light, and be sure that what he saw was a ghost when all he saw was a reflection from another part of the world. And hence, another ghost story is born. How these reflections come to be seen is not quite known, because one can never tell how reality truly works.

It's 5am and I've gotten carried away. I have rehearsal in 5 hours. Aiii.

But the mini story trip was worth it.

I wish I could write these down while I am driving. These moments when I see the possibilities in images of people, and, without fail, followed by pure curiosity about the one possibility that is their real life. I wonder who they are.