Just Waiting...and Watching

waiting

waiting2

at a Florida bus stop

cig break

a confident Italian woman

taking a break in Rome

Alain, a Frenchman in Rome

Salento doorway

A dog in Paris

Welsh dog

Charleston dogs

People waiting...the postures they assume......some of them reading, occasionally a snooze or cigarette, most often just watching, usually for transit, aware of each moment as time lost perhaps...ephemeral communities like the one above bound only by desire to board a certain bus...gatherings of strangers...or solo souls. Over the years I seem to have taken quite a few candid pictures of people caught in the act of waiting, and I thought I'd post a few here.

The first is outside a bus station in Charleston, South Carolina.

And the next was taken in San Francisco, also at a bus or shuttle stop. I like it because of the various postures and subsets, but mostly because actual knitting is taking place (far right). 

The sleeping man speaks worlds to me of work and weariness, of that irresistible desire for sleep born of exhaustion, even while waiting in the hot sun for a bus. This was in Florida.

I'm not even sure if the next picture qualifies for the waiting theme.  That man may just be taking a cigarette break. But I like how he has made himself comfortable on a low window ledge and seems to become a part of his surroundings, measuring time but enjoying it too, looking out at the world with equanimity, regaining composure for whatever comes next. This was in San Francisco.

The next picture was taken in Italy, and whatever this woman was waiting for, she emanates the aura of a confident beauty hoping to be discovered.

And after that, two elderly Roman citizens pause in the midst of heat and traffic waiting to recover the energy needed to resume their stroll. The woman with her flower print dress and roll-down stockings is a type one often sees, and one I somewhat fear becoming...but at least she's out and about.

Two more Italians follow...maybe not quite waiting, but poised in doorways watching.

Finally, canines in wait...and no one waits as doggedly as a dog.  Here's one perched on a chair and waiting for his owner outside a restaurant in Paris, another leashed to a gate at a festival in Wales watching for his human, and two sprawled in the heat of Charleston.