Metro stations

Paris metrostations are amazing : alone, they are an independant little underworld where sunlight, sky and moon are just a fading memory. Light here comes from neon tubes, and it's white, splashing the earthenware of the walls , dripping on the dark floor.
Chewed-gums are legion : they dapple the ground, stamped on day after day. Blacker stains under the fine dust.
The world above is a tale : down there is the realm of a snakelike beast of the underground : the Train.

And the people. From everykind : Babies in strollers. African women in bright robes. Myriads of teenagers, fancy clothed and good-looking girls. Men in suits, just fresh from work. These are the transient ones : for them stations are just a transit zone.
But there are dwellers under the ground : the artists, musicians and painters. Poor and Beggars. Will they end up forgetting what daylight means?

They are places for wild adventuring, daring and fleeting meetings, flashing smiles but fleeing gazes. A danger glides in the air. Fear of the Other who could harm us. And metrostations are teeming with others.

I handed a one euro piece of money to an old man sitting in Chatelet-les-Halles. I didn't have much with me. I smiled and he said : 'thank you, mademoiselle'. Nobody had seemed to notice him. He and I are akin : we are ghosts of some kind.
I visited some métrostations, not just passing through them, no : but enjoying the place for itself, drinking in the weird atmoshere of the underground.
I wish I had taken the picture-taker with me. Another time, perhaps.