I was awoken this morning at 5:30am by our upstairs neighbor, who has been christened with various nicknames like “Karate Horse” and “Old Elephant Legs,” which evolved into my current favorite, “Stampy.” Our ceiling/his floor has the integrity of a bayou shack.

Normally when I’m up at 5:30am, I’ll go walking or gyming, but yesterday’s mountain hike goaded several stagnant butt and thigh muscles, particularly this one three inches below my waist, two-thirds of the way around my hip. I call it the Slip Throttle muscle, because it’s only ever used to brace the legs and steady the torso while sliding down a snow-packed hiking trail in a pair of heavy boots.

As I listen to Stampy finish his shower, I decided to take the early train to work. A rush of activity: Shower, dress, yogurt, walk to the station. The 6:48am express regulars are mostly skinny Type A stress cases. If the train is late, there’s a lot of Blackberry fiddling, teeth grinding, and bitter muttering about MBTA accountability.

The train comes, and I sit in the last car and read the New York Times. At South Station, I join the slow-moving flood of passengers on the platform, baby-stepping behind two suits: “The invitation was addressed to Mary Ellen, not Mary Eileen,” one is saying, while the other is chuckling and shaking his head. Then the traffic slows to a near-crawl. “What is that?” one suit says derisively, and I look up.

A young man with olive skin and long black hair is sitting with his back to a trash can. He’s smoking a cigarette, which is flailing in his gesticulative hand, and he’s braying in brash berserk bursts of foreign, slavic words. He appears amazed by the hundreds of white-collar workers streaming past him on the narrow platform. Perhaps he thinks we should not be there, or that we are there for his amusement. But we know that he is the oddity, the prowler, the gypsy on the South Station train platform at 7:30am.