I have begun to take note of certain behaviours on public transport.

Not formally. There is no instruction to do so. Nothing has been issued, nothing circulated. If this were to be recorded, it would not yet have a category.

And yet it feels as though it could.

There are journeys now where no one speaks.

That in itself is unremarkable. What is less easily dismissed is the consistency with which silence is maintained. It is not shared. It is kept.

People arrange themselves with care.

Seats remain unoccupied where alternatives exist. Not out of courtesy—there is no visible need—but out of preference. Bags are placed, and left in place, creating a margin that is only surrendered when the pressure becomes undeniable.

Even then, the removal is delayed.

I have noticed that I do the same.

Eye contact is avoided almost entirely. Devices assist in this, but they are not necessary. The instinct is already present. The device simply confirms it.

At Connolly—twice this week—I observed a convergence at the platform edge. Several individuals reached the same point at the same time. There followed a sequence of small positional adjustments. No one spoke. No one acknowledged the others.

No contact was made.

No connection either.

It was, in its way, exact.

I found myself considering how easily such behaviours might be described. How little effort would be required to assign them terms. To establish acceptable ranges. To formalise what is already, in effect, being observed.

This thought did not feel unfamiliar.

There is already a preference for distance. Not extreme, not absolute, but sufficient. Enough to avoid the incidental. Enough to prevent the unmeasured exchange.

It would not require much to extend this.

Only recognition.

Only the act of naming what is already present.

I am aware, writing this, that I have begun to think in these terms without being asked to.

That may be the more significant development.

Not that such a system might be introduced—

but that, in some small and preliminary way,

it already has been.

— Rowan