Inevitably, each ride on the metro in Paris provides me with at least one larger-than-life caricature of a person. After seeing the movie Amélie I figured all the characters were just exaggerated to match the tone of the movie, but now I realize that’s not the case at all. People here are actually like that.

I made sure to write this sketch of one man watched for quite some time on the ride from the 16th arr to Place de la Concorde:

His whistle gave his presence away before he was actually seen, a breathy, shrill, constant sound like the birds who are so awful outside my window at 3 am these days. He was dressed almost entirely in black with a black felt fedora of good quality, a fox fur scarf, and a prada bag he treated with relative disregard. He carried his coat draped across his arm, an olive colored trench lined with satin paisley. His gloves were the same color as his coat, and he took them off and put them on gingerly. When he did I saw that he had beautifully delicate hands with fingers I’d suspect a pianist to have. He wriggled them gleefully when they were released from their glove-prison and when he covered them again, which he did every few seconds. The man comported himself much like his fingers, gleeful and animated, and walked, or rather bounced, to the rhythm of his whistle. He carried a wooden platform of sorts, 4 unvarnished boards nailed into two other pieces of equal size on either end. He paid very close attention to this unlikely treasure, setting it down hesitantly and glancing at it furtively every so often. He touched it every 5 seconds or so, as if to ensure it’s stability as it leaned against his Prada bag. Eventually, however, the imagined precarious state of its balance proved to be too much for him and placing his glove back on his excited fingers one last time with determination, he placed a firm hand on his prized possession.