Friday, October 15, 2004, 8:25am
Friday, October 15, 2004, 8:25am
On my way to Boston, with company-paid pizza on tap for later today, I arrive in Framingham this morning realizing how I’ve brought a lunch I will not need. Oh well, at least with the end of railroad reconstruction, the 8:07 train is falling into its accustomed routine of just a few minutes late.
High-school-age kids board at West Natick. Or maybe I’m so old now that college kids look that young. Who knows. Soon we sweep the lower lip of Lake Cochituate as one girl carrying a sealed Starbucks coffee cup scurries up the aisle heading for the next car. In an unplanned instant the lurching train shoves her into an empty row of seats. Then, composing herself, she hurls herself at the vestibule doorway just as its heavy stainless steel pocket door reacts to yet one more sideways lurch – pinning her in the door frame as though waiting to chomp at the right moment. In a last shear act of will, she squeezes through before gazing back through a window – eyes filled with amazement at the gantlet she has just defeated.
It’s hard to write as events like this unfold. At first they are happening before my eyes and my real-time perspective leads me to write in the present tense. Yet by the time I have finished a paragraph, the event is old news and it feels odd to maintain any sort of present time. For continuity I stay in the present anyway. But if I do happen to drift into the past for no obvious reason, my slow typing is probably the cause.
Few station stops are announced this morning and after our long express run, the train is rolling to a stop at Back Bay without any official recognition. In lieu of this, an impromptu announcement rises in its place…
“Mathew!” – an avuncular guy yells the length of the car looking back over my head.
“This is it – we gotta get off!”
Mathew acknowledges from far out of sight, agreeing to meet Mr. Avuncular outside on the platform. To those most unfamiliar with the railroad, what feels to me like repetitious station stop announcements are far more than mere railroad ritual.
During each commute, even among the well-initiated, announcements untangle the arrival and departure puzzle for that day, each one invoking the very same words as the day before to unlock the very same perplexities in the MBTA’s version of unraveling the ancient Gordian Knot. Today, as with each passing commute, I pick through the various scraps of evidence for where, when, and how the railroad might proceed until recalling Alexander’s solution against the challenge of that most mysterious braid. Breaking with protocol and tradition he simply cleaved the sacred mess wide open with one mighty stroke from his sword as if to say that puzzles are best dismissed if they do not require a solution.
