Friday, January 14, 2005
Friday, January 14, 2005
This morning except for where it was plowed into piles and the darker places behind buildings where the sun never shines in the winter the snow that was four inches deep yesterday has vanished. The Old Man seems to be taking a vacation, or sleeping at the switch, or playing a joke on us – any metaphor will do – because it is 70 degrees this morning. Strong tropical winds blowing from the southwest are carrying warmth – likely sending a counter-balance of colder air into somebody else’s world far from the normally frozen reaches of New England.
Perhaps once every dozen years we have a January day like this. The balmy bubble usually doesn’t last very long, and even now, across the giant empty parking lot left over from the hay days of Dennison Manufacturing on the horizon I can already see the clearing edges of an aqua blue sky heralding the re-arrival of true winter. Before I ride the 6:05pm train this evening we may lose 40 degrees, and where splashing puddles abound right now there may be the beginning crusts of ice. But until then I will enjoy the warmth while it lasts, because it won’t last very long.
From another world this morning there is news of radio data from Huygens, the probe released about a month ago from its Casini mother ship. Huygens survived its fiery atmospheric entry and just before I left for the train I heard nothing but promising reports of the probe floating on parachutes to the surface of Titan, the most mysterious moon in the solar system. Unlike every other known moon, Titan lies beneath a thick murky atmosphere where it has remained mostly veiled and mysterious until today, 4.6 billion years after its birth. Once the probe relays its data to Casini and then back to Earth, it may not be very long before we learn if Titan harbors an ocean of hydrocarbons with giant slow-motion waves, or a crust of solid ice, or mountains of goo, or something else we haven’t imagined.
In the deep woods after Wellesley Farms I see patches of snow in the shadows of fir trees and some clinging stubbornly in open areas. The snow fell deeper here than farther west – something that happens when the great storms roll in from the sea rather than through the Mid-west or off the Great Lakes. Yet now as we approach the harbor of Cape Cod Bay I resolve no snow at all except in piles left by the city plows.
Rolling fast through Newton an American flag points from atop its pole to the northeast. I probably would not have noticed except for the steadfast violence of the flag’s rectangular form standing straight out nearly undistorted except for finely rippling waves.
At the Channel 38 television tower we slow to perhaps 40mph. Traffic on the Pike catches up to pass us. Trash blows around the train. At the beginnings of the freight yard we plunge into a corrugated sheet metal canyon formed by nearly a mile of shipping containers lined up on both sides. All snow is gone from my view.
Except for the lack of buds on the trees this could easily be an April morning. Instead it is a joke being played out in the dead of winter. At Kenmore Square above the giant Citco sign clouds loom that might seem threatening on different day. Today they act as a warming blanket.
Underway out of Back Bay Station, in their daily ritual in a series a metallic clicks and bangs, the conductors match our stairways to the depot height platforms coming up last at South Station – once again dropping temporary metal floor panels in each vestibule – once again preparing for the end of another run.
The commute comes with a rhythm of its own like this, and after a time the beats trail into the background like the same song playing too many times to notice any longer.
