Piola, the renewal
Lately the subway stations are having a restyling. Getting off the train the day of my last exam, i saw this relic, unaware of accompaning the passage of thousands of students, but specially mine. For more than five years i’ve passed right next to it, peeking inside the ticket controller kiosk, always curious to see what the security cameras were showing on the screens, set on the shabby desk. The inspector of the moment didn’t really seem interested in those images, probably just too used having them in front of him. Sometimes i would see him reading the newspaper, other times i’d see him play crosswords and other more he would be there with his head laying on this cold and bleak desk, that could be anything except a good place where to have a nap. The new cubicle is much bigger and has more light: there’s also enough space for a fan. Everything is white and light grey. The old desk, abandoned in the middle of the corridor is yellowish and rusty and it seems to be at least 20 years old. Some of the drawers are open showing what as been left inside, telling stories about controllers that don’t seem too sorry to separate from a faithful compagnon, althought a bit old. The care for this furniture tells a lot of the feelings of the workers. The ATM kiosks are not really like the desk of a secretary, which learns to feel the desk HERS, keeping it clean, tidy, or filling it with ornaments that remind her of home. The ATM kiosks don’t have anything of all of this. The controllers that stay there will probably not stay if not for few hours and will be sent somewhere else. Inside these kiosks there’s no sign of them enjoying doing this job. The boredom and the tension you breathe passing by is of people who didn’t really want to do that job. They just happened to be there, so there’s no reason to take affections in it. It also may be ‘cause they are men, who usually aren’t so sentimental. The furniture has changed, what was in it is changing too: inside the drawers i can see an old newspaper and various documents ready to be forgotten like the desk that holds them. One of the drawers is broken. Did they brake it pulling the desk out of the kiosk or the controllers had to go mad for years trying to use something that didn’t work? It’s an important aspect, cause it’s hard enough to work in a dark cold humid place with a rusty desk: if we also give them broken drawers, the discomfort becomes really intolerable, not dignified for the ones that had to bear such situations. I’d say inhuman. These thoughts calm my madness against the crazy strikes of last month. I’m here, at home, writing my thesis in peace with everything i love around me to keep me company, drinking a warm cup of tea whenever i want. Who worked for years in the kiosk of Piola didn’t have all these comforts. What they see is always the same: the usual newspaper stand, the usual bar, and the usual columns that obstruct the view of people coming and going down the stairs, without leaving any traces of their passage and without speaking with the controllers’ part of the underground landscape. But now they have a better place to work, protected by the wind of the trains passing by. It might sound banal, but the other day i could see the satisfaction on their faces observing the facinated people staring at the renewal. The old lays in a corner of the corridor, waiting to finish its destiny somewhere else. Lonely. I feel a bit fatalist, i probably give to objects too much personality. It’s hard to think that inanimated things have accompanied our days for so long without getting a bit of life, absorbing our experiences and memories. I have a hard time separating from objects, and i feel even more melancholy if the old lays alone right next to the new, admired by everybody.
