Express
As one does, on a bus filled with strangers and a semi-long journey ahead, I found myself scrutinizing passengers. At times, I weave fantastic stories in my head of what their lives might be like, and my mind ecstatically dreams up Interpol fugitives, runaway princesses, ex-circus axe murderesses, clandestine cult leaders and high-school computer geeks, matured beyond recognition and ascending the ladder of managerial success, eventually to preside over their mocking high-school torturers. At other times, I imagine that the bus has been stranded in the middle of the desert, and I construct the subsequent social dynamic in my mind (who is to take the Hero role, who is to be the Damsel in Distress, who is to be the Psychopath who goes Crazy From The Heat and bashes someone to death with a Sandwich Box)...
My mood this morning, though, was far less fanciful, and I took to scrutinizing expressions instead. We have a plethora of emotions at our immediate disposal, but people seem to have a strange "default expression" which can only be described as, ironically, expressionless. In most cases I have seen, the default expression is a curiously sour concoction, with tangs of boredom and irritation, whiffs of restlessness, and occasionally, light infusions of "I hate the world". A sad sight, I thought, with some dismay.
But then she came into the bus like a lantern lights up a decaying crypt. She was small, unassuming, alone. She clutched her possessions close, as though the world had waged war on her personal space. But her default expression was - against all convention - an enormous, beautiful smile. It was like a breath of new air.