John

I met John. This was the first time I have really gone out of my way to approach someone outside of class to get to know them. I saw him walking down the platform with the sun in his eyes. I had my shoes off, my headphones on; feet communing with the bitumen surface, Radiohead softly filling my head.

I'm more often than not, one to wait for people to come to me. Not out of any elitism (although, sometimes I tell myself it's so) but more out of fear; fear of rejection, of the unknown, I suppose.

John is in my philosophy seminar. We'd exchanged some ideas that afternoon across the classroom, and I wondered further about some of his assertions. 

He talked about economic approaches and how they could be reconciled within a more humanistic philosophical model; something with a real-world basis.

I slipped my shoes back on and turned off my music, walking over.

"Hi" I said.

The train came and we'd already covered where I lived, and that no, I wasn't Canadian (he picked up on the strange fact that I have a habit of elongating my 'ere' - as in 'here' and 'where' - sounds).  Within minutes we were getting existential, both trying to comprehend some of the concepts which had been presented to us that afternoon.

The conversation oscillated between commonalities and lofty rhetorical questions of reductionism, Hegel, dialectical patterns and the world of becoming.

He's from New Zealand, although the accent has been beaten out of him, by people always asking him to 'say things'. 

He 'sells alcohol to people'; a dry characterisation of a job within our society which made me smile. No dressing it up with 'I'm a barman.' Straight to the essence of the matter: implying  his uncomfortable status of the larger implications of his employment.

He lives in Airport West so we took the same train that snaked slowly through the city loop, out towards North Melbourne, were I was to get off. As I made to do so, our conversation closing with the knowledge that it would most likely continue at our next class; he shook my hand, and I smiled.

"Enjoy." I said.