Something I don’t like about being dumped is the ability to get a restful sleep going right out the window. Well okay, there are a lot of things I don’t like about getting dumped, but that is one in particular. Still, I try to take advantage of it. Not doing the “I need to go jogging and get super fit thing”, but instead I’m leaving for work earlier and walking around in the time shortly before dawn.

I remember around twenty years ago, catching a train at an early hour – roughly around half-past-six  -and it not being packed. You’d be able to get a seat without issue. About five years later, possibly less, this became more difficult. You could still get a seat, but not so much to yourself. People’s working hours shifting, as well as more people working. It all changes over time, and that’s to be expected, really.

These days it’s even less likely, and so when I’m getting off the train I’m getting off with a lot of other people. In a sense, its the same with driving. There’s more traffic and the sun is yet to remind us of its existence.

So I park or I get off the train and I walk in the dark. When getting off the train it’s with a good few other people, and we all spread out once we leave the station. We fragment and become more individual in our movements, and you see people just walk. You get a sense of the quiet and the busy, and emptiness isn’t empty so much anymore. There’s space, but you don’t feel you have it. At the same time, there’s an implication of the idea of what silence should be, among all the noise of traffic going by. You can almost hear where it should sit and how it should continue beyond the brief moments it has between vehicles and other people walking.

The last minutes of night seem to be dawn waking up before it should. People are already moving and being busy, and sure, it’s been that way for a long time; far beyond the time I’ve been alive for, but it seems to be increasing by quite a bit. At the same time, in these minutes, and the hour before, and even the hour before that, it seems that there still remains a sense of difference. It still seems less lively, or rather lively in a way that’s different to the daytime. There still is space. There still is an aloneness that comes from having fewer people around, and there’s something interesting about seeing how others navigate this pre-daylight space.

In a sense time is transformative for space and its function, and the world is no less lively just because more people are asleep, but the atmosphere changes and settles into something different. It’s something else to look through and think about, and even though it has changed from when I was younger, it’s still something that I appreciate.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:05:11

Slower than I hoped. I started thinking a lot about what I was writing, which is beneficial in this instance. Could be much better, as I feel I may have gone into repetition, but I’m still happy with the result.

Written at work.