Trolley Trance or The Silent Society

I honestly don't know what it is about trolleybuses, but I'm starting to believe they're the hidden drugs of the era.
Touch your nose if you've noticed it before, but as soon as people enter the malodorous, cramped, crowded and awkward world of the trolleybus, their functions and intellects take a deep plunge heading for the sidewalk. Thinking is flicked off, breathing is only a reflex, blinking is slow and forgotten more than oft and if you find anyone who so much turns their head in your direction, it means you're special. Very special.
My best guess is that people who build the trolleybuses must rub morphine on the floors and bars we so innocently touch. Atoms and atoms of morphine slither beneath out cells and make us all numb. It's my best guess, like I said, because I can find no other reason for people to act so uniformly dumb.
Seriously now, I can find no logical reason that in the midst of such opportunities of socializing, people basically turn themselves off, shut themselves in. They become a closed society, not noticing others, and never being noticed. It's like trolleybuses are moving devices that create zombies. Don't know if you've ever seen the mass of people in a bus staring outside: they look like corpses under a thick layer of ice.
Rarely does a dying ember crane a neck, blink or blow his nose in scary proximity of another. But with every movement, every slicing of the air, one causes the other embers to completely die away. The more you want to come close to them, the more they cringe and recoil.
You smile, their faces lock in a constipated rictus. You sigh, they back away fearing your vapours of sorrow might cling to them. You sniff, they frown distantly, as though a heavy noise bothered their deep meditation. You so much as look at them and they make a point of blinking lazily and staring forward.
The few passings of words have a strictly material purpose. People demand information they need. They don't care about why you've just rolled your eyes or pursed your lips. From the beggar who demands money by jutting a bumpy hand in front of you, from the lady who paints on a peasantly cold face and asks you if she could borrow your already used ticket, they are all ruled by their needs. I've often wondered, while looking round the cramped space that holds so many inert things, if they wonder as well. Do any of them see my ruffled hair and ask themselves why I choose to live without a comb by my side? Do they see the old lady who's munching on pastries like there's no tomorrow and brushing off crumbs from her enormous belly, thus showering the people in front of her with an assortment of edible debris? The yawning child, the wrinkled beggar, the driver who has pictures of his children and a few naked women on the windshield, the white-shirted student, the ostentatious Barbie, the tired young woman, the couple holding hands, the obviously disgusted punkrocker, the painfully blonde backpacking tourist, the skinhead with an electric aura nobody wants to step near, the old man with spectacles as thick as elephant hide, my reflection in the grimy window.

I see them all.

But do they see me?