Tuesday, September 28, 2004, 5:54pm
Tuesday, September 28, 2004, 5:54pm
The rain has been falling all day as the last of Jeanne wrings herself dry over New England like an old sponge giving up its last drips. Beneath such a seemingly certain gloom I’m thinking about uncertainty again. It’s not just an intellectual exercise because now that I am more aware of the notion, I see just how much it governs most human behavior.
As part of my plan to sell the Leica rangefinder I’ve been pricing these cameras on eBay. Often the bidding has little to do with camera quality. For example, a pawnshop in California recently sold what seemed like a decent M3 for about $500 and perhaps the thought of a buying from a pawnshop dealer versus some Leica specialist had bidders worried. Properly described M3 bodies from well-known camera stores fetch as much as $900. This one sold for less with the reputation of the seller being the only difference.
It’s likely this sort of compensation happens in other ways. If the weather is looking bad I’ll allow extra time for my walking commute – not just for practical reasons, but at least as much to reduce my anxiety back to a normal level. Anxiety is the compass – it’s what tells me if my sense of risk is unclear and likely higher than I realize. Doubts need to be addressed somehow in some meaningful way or else the anxiety will not subside.
After boarding the last of its passengers tonight the ‘6:05pm Worcester Train’ rolls smoothly through the western mouth of the Back Bay Tunnel. Thick clouds have brought an early pall to raise unnatural lighting from the dead. The classic Citco sign set high above Kenmore Square burns brightly while far-away skyscrapers peer at us through jungle-eyed windows. Just past BU we’ve stopped again for an inbound train that must pass eastbound before we can venture on. It’s a long wait here tonight – more than five minutes so far. One train has already passed, but we seem to be waiting for another.
No. Not true. We’re underway again.
Uncertainty seems only to matter as long as there is a perceived level of associated risk. For example, as long as the traffic controllers seem to have the situation under control I am mostly curious. Even if I were wrong in my predictions about the length of a delay there would be no sense of danger unless the delay dragged along well past any reasonable length of time. If I check my internal anxiety compass about tonight’s pause I can confirm this because I’ve felt no inner tension even though my uncertainty about the delay was real.
If it really did matter somehow – like if we’d stopped in an emergency maneuver with ashen conductors racing through the aisle, and if thereafter passengers were fleeing the train with smoke billowing in their wake – then the combination of those circumstances would generate intense anxiety. In this case the anxiety would not cease until I’d closed this computer and headed for the doorway myself. I suppose anxiety is not just a matter of sensing a danger but also my sense of powerlessness over the danger. Let’s say that I am trapped aboard a train that I know is on fire nearby. Even with all sorts of announcements telling me that matters are under control I’d still be trapped – and that sense of powerlessness would feel far worse than the smallest chance of saving myself.
The reality of the actual train ride intrudes as I become aware of my surroundings. From a turn in the tracks I infer that we have rolled through Wellesley and are heading uphill past Wellesley College into downtown Natick. Yet except for the silhouettes of trees drifting through a nearby fog, the night surrounding this train it is entirely dark, and our exact location is just a guess. Then, putting my doubts to rest, for just a few seconds Lake Cochituate opens nearly to the horizon interrupting the flow of darkness.
The sense of entombment inside these afternoon trains builds a little more each day. The trains run through the fading autumn light changing the established outdoor sense of summer into an inside feeling. Now my window frame presents little more than distant spots of light overlaid across disjointed splotches of interior reflection. In brief instances headlights and streetlights flash past my view followed by the railroad crossing lights at Route 126 while we slow to a graceful halt at Framingham Station.
The station stops are snappy tonight – less than 20 seconds from arrival to departure. Perhaps the engineer is trying to make up time. No matter the reason, I feel a slight bit of anxiety about it, and resolve as a counter measure to leave my seat just a little bit early, not because my normal routine won’t be fast enough – since I maintain plenty of time in my buffer – but because I want to re-balance this sense of unease back to a normal level, and leaving my seat a bit sooner is an easy solution.
Anxiety arises whenever I feel any sort of disequilibrium and it seems that only two sorts of solutions exist in this regard – either reestablish normality or adapt to the newer order.
The long right-hand turn into downtown Ashland is in full swing on approach to John Stone’s Inn. Can’t see the tavern passing but I know it’s there. So now it’s time to go.
