BUZZ BUZZ!
My cellphone flashes blue and white: Instagram. “Press ‘allow’ to see this message,” the app says. My thumb hovers over the button. I think it over. I’m skeptical when I receive a photo from a stranger without any text. Sometimes ‘hot Russian women looking for love’ send photos to strangers. I don’t need to see that. Tonight though, I press ‘allow.’

“Found one of your portraits on a train,” the caption to the photo reads. “I’ve fallen in love with it since then.” The photo shows a Mac computer screen in warm indoor lighting. There’s a portrait lying on the computer: it’s one of mine.

I’m glad I write serial numbers on these things. This portrait has the digits 9-6-2-0 written on its right-hand side. I open my Google Drive, open a folder called ’10000 Smiles,’ and start looking. June: 9428. 9466. Too early. Wrong month. July: 9564. 9620. Bingo.

This was on a train. I see the DeutscheBahn patterned blue upholstery in the side of the picture. There’s a colored bag and a few brown toes of a man showing from a corner of the photo. He’s number 9620. Who is he? Where was this? I flick to pictures a few over in my Drive: 9619, 9618, 9617…a family. The kid brother and teenage daughter had Christopher Streets Day wristbands. I remember them. The brother was shy, the mom talkative. This was July 20th: a day I travelled 560 kilometers over 7 hours with 8 train connections. So 9620 was on a short regional connection. It wasn’t my first that day. It wasn’t my last.

BUZZ BUZZ!

My phone blinks again. “Found it some weeks ago and love it,” the stranger types in another message. “I’m gonna frame it.” It’s not his. Somehow this portrait got separated from its owner, got lost on a train, and travelled to some tiny town with 15,000 residents, named Lohr am Main. Then this Instagrammer messaging me picks it up. He sees a sketch of a stranger just lying on a train. He keeps it. Two months later he snaps a photo of his find, and sends this pic to the Instagram of another stranger: me.
Why would he frame this? Isn’t this crazy?

I usually think of these portraits I draw as being between the subject and myself. But they’re not. This guy is a stranger neither the subject nor I know. Yet somehow this portrait of a stranger affected him enough to keep it. Then to want to tell me about it. Then to someday (he says) frame it. Isn’t this crazy?
I never know what happens to the pictures I draw. I’ve drawn a lot. Some tell me they’ve framed theirs; others tell me theirs end up on desks; taped to walls; in folders for memories; in closets. Two I’ve seen torn to pieces in front of me. I don’t understand why. One I saw bitten into. That was a crazy teen dressed as a nun trying to be funny. I know what happened to a few. For thousands I never will. But for this one, just tonight I learned the adventures it’s been on.

“What are your thoughts on existence and experience and the universe?” I take a moment. I smile. That’s a broad question, I reply. Could you be more specific?

We’re at a bar. Actually, we’re at a speaking event hosted by a bar. Eight speakers talked of Darwin Awards and veganism and brain chemistry and infinity. I talked about infinity. The night is now late. The event is now over. The speakers spoke. Now everyone is sipping beer and chatting in small groups. I join a table of three in the corner. Is this chair free? I sit down. I draw one of their portraits. The three stare. This isn’t what they expected when they said “yes, this seat’s free.”

Yes, it takes a few moments for them to resume talking. Now I am the subject of conversation. The one I draw has a question for me: “do you think we discover math,” he asks, watching my two hands drawing his picture, “…or that we invent it?” I give him my take: patterns in data are there whether they mean anything or not; whether it is chance or something deeper is behind I don’t trouble myself about. Yes, I reply, We discover math. We discover these patterns.

This isn’t the response he wants to hear. He’s spent a week in a meditation retreat, eating once daily and staring at walls. I’m a guy that just gave a talk about hierarchies of sizes of infinity impossible to truly comprehend, now handing him a portrait of himself, drawn with two hands. These are strange circumstances. So he decides to ask a strange question: “What are your thoughts on existence and experience and the universe?”

I take a moment. What can you say to a question like that? Under what context do you ask someone a question like that? It’s flattering to be asked about the meaning of life by a sixteen-year-old. It’s flattering to be asked what one should do with her life by a fourteen-year-old; by a new high school grad; by a college freshman. But this gentleman is older than I.

It’s strange I’ve come to accept that answering these kinds of questions comes with my hobby. I don’t know all the answers. I’m just a beginner, learning as I go. I only answer what I can.
 

Nevertheless, she takes notes. There are four of us at this table: two speak of existence, experience, and the universe, one with glasses listens wordlessly, and the last takes a piece of paper, a pen, and jots my words down as I say them. She’s a quiet type—preferring to make herself invisible at the table than join the discussion—but you can tell there’s a lot going on between her ears. It’s a strange night. It’s strange to be asked these kinds of questions. It’s stranger to see someone recording my responses in careful scrawl to remember them by.

I place my warm pastry, my hot cup of tea, and Harper Lee’s book on a table in the coffee shop of a bookstore. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’—I’m buying it for a friend. I pull out a sheet of hard, sturdy cardstock paper, and carefully measure lines across it. I crease the paper, checking that the book fits like a glove inside it’s new sleeve. I pull out my brush pens, and draw a new cover for this book. My cover.

A man watches me as I alternate between eating my pastry, sipping my tea, and drawing this cover. I’m not using one, but two pens to draw. I’m not using one, but two hands to draw. “You’re an artist, huh?” he asks me. Yeah, I respond. I like to draw. He returns to his book. I to my work. He puts his book down again. “How are you doing that with two hands?”

I push my small plate away. I set my tea aside. I grab a piece of paper. I draw him. He’s surprised, of course. He asks questions, of course. I answer them, while I finish his picture.

Then it’s back to my gift. My friend’s birthday is today. I finish the book jacket, and take another sip. I think through what to write inside. I write a few words. I cross them out. I write a few more. The man now has company.

He’s a big man with a beard. I recognize neither his smell nor his accent. The first man tells the one with the beard: “this guy next to you, he draws with two hands! Look, he drew me!” The bearded man now asks me questions. I pull out another sheet, and draw his picture. When it’s finished, I plan to return to writing.

“Amazing,” the bearded man says, holding his portrait so he could see it. “You know,” he begins. “I collect rare pictures.” The first man joins in: “tell him about your Merkel picture!” The big bearded man is happy to be asked. “You won’t believe it,” he tells me, “but I have a picture of Angela Merkel from the FKK days.” Freikörperkultur is a nudist movement especially common in 1980’s East Germany. He draws back, pleased with his find. “You wouldn’t think so today, but she was quite a looker then. And,” he leans back in to me: “she was completely naked.”

I try not to laugh. I tell him that’s an interesting find. I return to my work, and complete my dedication on Lee’s novel. Finished, I stow my things. “Will you be back here again?” the bearded man asks me. Maybe. “I’ll be here. Every weekend, right in this café.”

I walk into the bar, and find a free seat at the crowded table of the Japanese Stammtisch. “How was your day?” one of the Germans asks me in Japanese, taking a sip from his beer. すごいでした！ (Super!) I respond. I forget that Germans never say they had a great day. They say ‘passt’ (which is something between ‘it was OK’ and ‘it happened’). So my expression of ‘super’ is especially out of place. “Oh?” he continues confusedly, “What happened? Why was today a super day?” I had a wonderful train ride. He almost chokes on his beer, he laughs so hard. “You took the train here,” he switches to German, “…and that’s what made today super?” He’s hoping he misunderstood my Japanese. Yes, I tell him, that’s right.

Just one hour before, I get onto a big train this Friday afternoon fresh off work. My eyes scan this way and that, calculating a place to sit where I can see the most people. I decide on a spot near a group of women. They take a hard look at me, plainly wondering why of all the free places in this train car, I’m sitting near them. Even so, their conversation soon resumes its normal pace. Suddenly it slows down again. They notice my two hands drawing a woman in my view. “Look, look at him!” one whispers to the others, drawing their attention to the portrait quickly taking shape on a bright yellow piece of my drawing paper. The whispering woman twists her body around to see who I am drawing: someone sitting one row behind her. “And he draws with two hands,” whispers another woman from this group.

I finish this portrait. I hand it to the subject, who is quite surprised. She hadn’t been paying much attention. Her neighbors had. But I have much more than these women’s attention when I start on the next portrait. Again, I draw someone I can only see thanks to my particular position near these ladies. This woman nudges her boyfriend, and soon he watches me draw as well. I finish, snap a photo of the portrait, and hand it to her. “This is wonderful,” she exclaims. “You’ll have to draw my mother next,” she says, pointing to the row of seats behind her. “She’s sleeping back there.”

Unfortunately, her sleeping mother is not in view, hidden behind chairs and people I can see. But now the ladies I sit beside are so thoroughly intrigued, I have to draw one of them next. I make eye contact with one of them. She knows the drill now. She tries to keep still. She tells the others how nervous she is to get a portrait. She is finally glad I chose such an odd place to sit.

I draw the second, third, and begin on the fourth of these women friends, when one of the train employees comes by. She’s checking tickets. I put my things aside, show her my pass, and continue drawing. The Kontroller (ticket checker) slows, then stops her work. She stares at my drawing. The women friends now chime in: “yes, he just draws people. He’s drawn almost all of us already, look!” They show the train Kontroller their portraits in turn. She stares a bit longer, then continues with her work. But some minutes later, with all tickets checked, she returns and asks me: “would you be able to draw me too?”

We make good conversation. She’s curious about where I’m from and how this hobby started. She’s so engrossed that she doesn’t notice as passengers try to pass her in the walkway. She’s very happy when I hand her the sketch which, more or less, looks like her. She wishes me luck as the train stops once again, letting on passengers with tickets needing to be checked. She returns to her work with a smile on her face that’s just a little bigger.

I draw an Australian with a leather jacket who’s travelling Europe. “Are you in the Guinness World Records or something? It’s amazing what you do.” I draw two Eritreans. We can’t communicate too well with eachother, but as the train arrives to its final station they shake my hand and thank me. An older German couple I didn’t even draw approach me: “it’s a wonderful thing you do,” they say.


I walk out of the station, still aglow, still sporting a grin, and enter the bar for tonight’s Japanese Stammtisch. I find a seat at a crowded table. “How was your day?” one of the Germans asks me in Japanese, taking a sip from his beer. Super! I respond.

‘Punctual, like the trains in Germany.’ The train is delayed by fifteen minutes. Then, the train is cancelled. People huddle in jackets, scarves, hats and gloves on the platform. When we finally get on the red regional train to the big city, it’s full with two train’s worth of people. So there is nowhere to sit.

I draw a few people, standing up. I can only use one hand, so I alternate with each portrait: one with my right hand, one with my left. They’re still defrosting from the long wait in the cold. Someone soon lets me use his giant suitcase as a table. Both hands make good use of it. An older couple can’t stop watching me. They can’t stop talking about me. I manage to draw one of them, before our train reaches its final destination. They wish me good luck.

I make it in time for our lunch appointment. Living far from friends means we have to schedule these kinds of things. The line to the restaurant stretches far into the sidewalk on a freezing afternoon, but that’s no big deal. Once we’re waiting inside, it’s warm. I take a seat with my friends in the crowded reception area. I draw a family that, like us, is waiting for a table. As I draw each young daughter, they run over to show their dad. They proudly display their portraits to their grandma. Their dad gives me a nice smile. We get a table. We enjoy four delicious bowls of piping hot ramen.

My friend and I get off. He’s never seen me draw in a train before. I was lucky he joined me on a day I received an ovation. As we talk, two Kurdish men from the tram approach me. “Could you...also draw my picture?” one of them asks. I ask my friend if he’d mind. Sure, I tell them.

We find a café there in the station. They buy me a cappuccino. We take a seat on the long couch and I draw their pictures. A balding man with glasses can’t stop staring. His mouth hangs open the entire time I draw. My hands move fast now, warm and comfortable. I draw both men, then their girlfriends from photos they share with me, before I cap my pens; before I return my folder to its place in my bag. I make my way to leave. The balding man looks up. He points at his face. I close my eyes and smile. OK. I take my paper and pens out again. I draw one more portrait in this coffee shop. He can’t stop admiring it.

 
I find the big red train that will take me home. I walk past each train car, surveying which will have the most faces for me to draw; which will have the best possibility for interesting conversations. I pick a seat, and realize I know the girl across from me. I drew her only two weeks ago! She was an artist herself, and drew me too. I smile at her. She recognizes me too.

I draw a young couple. “…und mit beiden Händen!” says an older woman near us. Naturally, I draw her next. We talk of studies and work and my experiences being new in Germany. I set my eyes on someone sitting a bit farther from us. I draw her picture. I hand it to her. Ano…kimi wa nihonjin desuka? (um…are you Japanese?) “Ehhh? Yes I am!” she answers. I change seats. I sit next to her and her boyfriend. There are no Japanese people in my small town. A chance to practice like this is a rare treat, I explain. She watches my hands move, mouth open as I draw her boyfriend. “…Ryou te de!” (“…With both hands!”) she exclaims, at least a few times. “I find it amazing you can talk and draw at the same time,” the boyfriend tells me, in German. No, the hard part is drawing and speaking in Japanese at the same time, I explain. I get a few minutes of practice in. What I can’t say in Japanese I explain in German, the gears of language in my brain shifting with less friction now. Kore wa watashi no eki desu, (this is my stop), I say, telling them goodbye. “Hopefully we’ll meet again,” the Japanese woman responds.
The doors open and I step off the train. I put on my jacket, scarf, hat, and gloves at the platform. I head home.

“Who are you going to draw next?” the curious lady asks. Um…I don’t know. Maybe I’ll draw- “-You should draw that lady over there.” She interrupts, pointing to an older woman sitting across from her. “She’s not going to get off for a lot of stations.” The woman with many stations giggles. She and the curious lady are probably friends. I draw her portrait, then turn to see who’s next. I nod to an Indian man sitting next to me. He shakes his head. “I alight at the next station.” Seeing an opportunity, a Chinese tourist sitting behind him hops up: “Please, then, draw me next!” He tries to find a seat across from me, squeezing between commuters. I do my best. I hand it over. His smile grows so big, he asks his wife to come over and take a photo of us together. I can’t stand and go to him—I have too many things. He comes to me instead. There is nowhere for him to sit so he kneels on the floor beside me. His wife snaps a photo of us together, posing with his portrait. His English isn’t good—but his Thank You’s are emphatic.

The lights above the train doors show my stop is coming soon. This train is nothing like I expected Singapore to be. I wasn’t expecting a country that outlaws singing loudly in subways, chewing gum in public, and bringing smelly fruit on the train to have some of the friendliest commuters I’ve ever seen.
I’ve drawn quite some people in this train car now. “Can you draw me too?” I’m surprised to look up and suddenly see an excited university student in front of me. “And do you mind if I film you?” her sister asks, holding up a smartphone and a smile. She’s wearing a yellow pullover dress. They’re a family, with parents in tow. They saw me from a different train car and came over to be drawn.

Sure, I say. No problem. “Oh! But you’ll have to hurry! We’re getting off at Outram Park. That’s the next station!” the student realizes. “Can you draw someone that fast?” No, I can’t. But we work out a plan. When the stop arrives, I get off the train with them. There’s a bench by the tracks. We take a seat, and I can take my time. Because I want to do a good job for this student and her family. Because they look like they really appreciate it. The whole family—mom, dad, daughter, sister—ask me questions:

“Why do you do this for free?”
“How long have you been drawing for?”
“Do you like Singapore? Will you miss it here?”
“What should I do to make an impact on the world?”

…How am I supposed to know that? What am I supposed to answer to that? I don’t know this family, I don’t know the secret to making the world a better place, but this student and her sister ask me life advice anyway. They listen in rapt attention to everything I say. And it is so heartwarming, to see the faith they have in me. Their earnestness, their curiosity, their deep respect in me feel so…good.
We talk for ten minutes. I draw the one university student, then the other. They say a million Thank You’s. They ask for a selfie, all five of us together, grinning wide as the Pacific Ocean.

We part ways.

I told them I wasn’t sure I’d miss Singapore. It’s just a city. But nearly one year later, I find I was wrong. Yes, I do miss Singapore. I miss its commuters, and I miss that beautiful ride in February.

It’s quite late. I sit in the quiet waiting room of the central train station. The walls are painted a dark color and the lamps aren’t all that bright. A few people are trying to sleep behind me, in the time before their train arrives. There’s an older Thai woman and her adult daughter with their large luggage rollers sitting to one side. There’s a man with a scar on his face, one eyelid drooping lower than the other, with hollow cheeks. He’s unfolding a newspaper and reading. I sit down, lay my bag on the seat next to me, and pull out my paper and two pens.

I draw the man. Actually, he’s a little bit scary looking. I’ve learned through drawing seven-thousand-four-hundred-and-eleven people that the order you draw people in is important. Everyone can smile when they get a portrait—but it’s safest to draw the scary looking people last.

Tonight, though, I take a chance. I draw him first. While his scarred face looks like it’s been through a lot, he doesn’t act scary—he’s even reading! My two hands start to move, gliding the ballpoint pens across the surface of the paper, this way, then that.  As I’m about to finish, the man takes note. He looks up from his newspaper. He looks at me, then his watch. He gets up to leave. Just before he can, I hand him his portrait. It’s for you, I say, wearing a smile. It doesn’t cost anything. He looks at it for a while. He puts his things back on his seat. He walks over to me. “Do you think I look friendly?” he asks. There’s no smile on his face. I don’t understand his question. I’ve never been asked this before. Well, I didn’t draw you because you looked friendly, I drew you because you were in front of me. I like to draw people, so I draw everyone. It doesn’t matter what they look like. “I see,” he said. “But…when you drew me…” he thinks over his words, “…did you think I looked friendly?” I still don’t understand his question. I still don’t understand his tone. Does he not like his picture? Did he not want to be drawn? I don’t say yes. I don’t say no. I’m not sure what to say. At my reaction, he looks a bit disappointed. “My friends tell me that I’m not a friendly looking guy. I thought maybe…you thought different.”

Just then I realize what he wanted. Just then I realize that he’s just an ordinary guy with a scary face. Just then I realize that after getting over the shock of being drawn with two hands, his mind started to contemplate something even stranger: that this young artist could think he looked friendly.
 

It all took place in the matter of a few seconds. If there had been more time, or had I not been so tired, I would’ve caught on earlier. I would have told him yes, I thought you looked friendly. But it was too late. He was already gone.

I get onto a Saturday afternoon train to the big city. Experience has taught me that while the elderly don’t pose a threat to me, here in Germany they often feel threatened by me—so I look for a place to sit near immigrants; near youngsters; near people under forty. Finding a seat on a train is like opening a pack of Pokémon cards: you never know what’ll you’ll get to work with. But you work with it. The new parents with mixed kids I had noticed go to sit in some far corner of the train. Before me instead are a group of elderly women. But they’re happy—even full of energy. I get to drawing the happiest one. Whispers begin, and soon smiles too. They are all abuzz with the drawing. They start a conversation with me. By the time I begin on the second elderly lady, even others on the train join in on the conversation. There is such a glow on that short ride. You can never know, until you try.

I have two bags. Together, they weigh 13.6 kg—too heavy for my airline. “It’s OK, I’ll let it through. Just be careful for next time,” the very polite check-in attendant warns me. On the plane, I see why. The overhead lockers are stuffed. I check one section, then another, before I give up. Instead, I try to squeeze my two bags under the seat above me. 13.6 kg—too many souvenirs to fit comfortably in the space before me. “Actually you can put it under this seat here. I don’t think there’s anyone sitting between us.” The girl with the window seat says. I slide out my black, oversized handbag. I push it under the middle chair. A much better fit—no more squeezing. That’s a strange accent…are you American? I ask. No. She’s not. She’s from Singapore. The destination of our aircraft. She’s heading home after a trip to Taiwan.

We start the conversation slowly, talking about food: love-it-or-hate-it dishes and regional delicacies. Soon I notice something strange: she doesn’t love anything or hate anything. She likes ‘garlic cheese’ but doesn’t care much for it. She listens to music but can’t invest the time to know the bands’ names. She watches movies but doesn’t like to think about them afterwards. “For me, because I like a little bit of everything, I don’t really follow anything.”

Sure, I’ve heard “I listen to everything” before. I’ve heard “I really don’t know what I like to do” before. But it’s never true. With sharp skill, the layers of passive I don’t know’s can be trimmed away. I’ve had lots of practice. Most times, I only have a few stops on the train line to get to know someone; to get a feel for that person. I’ve gotten good at cutting the fat off conversations. I’ve gotten good at finding what makes a person smile. But in this case…I trim and trim only to find more fat.

There’s a question I ask that can often reveal a lot about a person: If you could spend the day with your (half your age) self, at the end of the day, what would your younger self be most impressed with about you? She makes a face. “Honestly, I don’t like kids very much. So I’m not sure what I would even tell my younger self. I don’t think my younger self would like me enough to be impressed by anything. So honestly, like, I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.” I’m starting to realize that maybe this isn’t just a defense. Maybe it’s not that she’s too embarrassed to talk about what drives her. Maybe, this girl from Singapore with well-shaped eyebrows really has no defining interests; really has never let herself develop a passion; really has no shape, conforming to the container she’s in: this girl is like water.

Her brother, I learn, is more like me. He has dreams and ambitions. He enters a conversation knowing what he wants. He talks of deep things. She does not. “All my conversations are really surface, because, I guess I think that nobody really cares about my opinion anyway.”

I like to stare into the depths of people’s souls—I like to know what makes them. When I see a face, I imagine what makes it smile; what makes it frown, cry, grow sad, look puzzled; what makes it laugh. The week before, I visited a crossing in Shibuya with literally a river of people. Thousands of bodies, moving in and out with the flow of traffic lights. Thousands of faces. I looked at as many as I could. I stared into their eyes. I tried to see their souls. I tried to imagine their families. I tried to imagine how they grew up and who they were. I didn’t want to see them as water. I didn’t want to dehumanize them. But this Singaporean girl on the plane, who likes ‘garlic cheese’ but doesn’t care much for it, this girl who watches ’11 ways you know you’re really Singaporean’ but doesn’t particularly enjoy it, this girl with well-shaped eyebrows who sums herself up as a ‘squiggle,’ she may well be water.