Thursday, January 27, 2005, 4:19pm
Thursday, January 27, 2005, 4:19pm
Trains parked on Track 1 have the disadvantage of a platform more like a narrow sidewalk with no extra capacity for sudden surges of pedestrian traffic rushing in the hundreds to board a waiting train. Just a few minutes ago the train that was to become the 4:10 express arrived at South Station exactly at this spot, and though everyone is more than eager to board on such freezing cold and windy afternoon, it looks like we’ll be running ten minutes late after forcing our way through the needle’s eye.
And that uses every bit of slack time I have to reach Arthur’s group.
At 4:24 we’re still parked at South Station. A few grateful stragglers arrive and board. Time drags on.
Turnaround for a train arriving late to a quick departure time can depend on all sorts of factors, some I can guess, some that will remain a mystery. I did notice the conductors waiting with us, but I have no idea about the next engineer for example who, at the very least, must have trekked the length of the train once the crowd finally thinned out enough.
Enough speculation. We’re underway. And just as it becomes obvious to me how the open door to this carriage might bring unwelcome winter air, an older man deciphers the mystery by releasing an overhead latch that I never knew existed on these older blue-seat cars.
With the more or less exact extent of our delay finally made clear, a sudden wave of urgent conversation fills the cabin – the result of cell phone owners madly keypad-punching various adjustments to their busy schedules by phoning whoever might be waiting at the next way station of their lives. It occurs to me that we must have lives that are way too damn busy that a train running 12 minutes late is really going to matter.
There is more snow piled on the streets of Boston than at any time in living memory – including the great Blizzard of 1978, and with a fresh few inches overnight it really is worth a bit of photography. My camera is hardly a professional grade so these are more historical photos than attempts at art. Perhaps this will be of interest to friends living in warmer parts of the world.
With no obvious reason, at Back Bay Station only a handful of would-be passengers straggle aboard, not the crush I usually see. Soon we lurch to a heavy start continuing our trek beneath waves of fading and unintelligible track announcements echoing throughout the caverns of this place. The lower level of the Back Bay tunnel is by far the most sterile and uninspired creation I have ever witnessed or could ever imagine.
Aboard the train, it’s likely that our cattle-call boarding procedure back at Track 1 disrupted the normal social circle structure – at least that would be my guess for why conversation aboard the train is so much less animated than most Thursday afternoons. Just a guess, I don’t know exactly, nor do I have any real way to find out for certain.
Ah certainty! If only I could learn to accept how this is simply never really possible, rather than grasping at all the straws I use to infill my doubts.
If I am willing to phrase any query with enough qualifiers and with enough pure logic then I can be certain about a limited answer to this limited question. Yet as soon as I ask a meaningful question such as whether or not this train will get me to Ashland Station in time – I can only say how there is still a fair possibility because of how the train left only 12 minutes late, and if road traffic is okay I may still reach South Natick by 5:45. If anything delays my trip further, I’ll be late.
In this way certainty ebbs and flows, and perhaps it is mostly about measuring the size of the uncertain gap itself. Yet even that notion misses the boat because no matter how large the gap, there is always a gap, and never a way to complete fill the space between what we know and what is still unknown. Uncertainty is a constant and our perception of the gap changes depending on how we frame our questions,, assertions, and plans.
Even on days when the train leaves on time I am less than perfectly certain about my chances. Something could still happen to cause a delay. On the other hand, if the train is already leaving 25 minutes late, all is not lost. I might still rework the odds, perhaps by calling a taxi to meet me at West Natick Station. So almost no matter what happens I can adjust my sense of the odds and my feelings about my chances – though in an absolute sense I can never say that any of this will work out as expected.
Exactly how I bridge the absolute gap of uncertainty– the real gap that never can be closed no matter how hard I try – this the hard part that drives perfectionists crazy and gnaws at the inner core of every other personality type in some fashion, whether obvious or not. Uncertainty and how I deal with the gap is the central dilemma of my human existence, and how I react to this, how I deal with this, perhaps more than anything else determines how I see the outside world – the world beyond my own mind – and how I interact with it.
The sun might yet be hovering as we ride into early twilight, though after a good look to the western horizon, the sun is gone, leaving fading embers of amber and pink. Those colors only happen after the sun has set – at least here in New England in the winter on a cold, cloudless, and very dry day.
I was born in 1955, and most of my life that number has not felt like ancient history. But now as my 50th birthday is upon me I am beginning to attribute the aches and pains to more than the low-activity of 25 years in an office setting. The notion that age might be fully addressed by laboring in some workout gym is long gone. Yet in a ray of hope, after 29 months commuting nearly three miles a day on foot I’ve rebuilt and maintained more than I expected to see, and right this moment I may never feel any better than I feel right now.
In another ten or twenty years I won’t be young in any sense of the word and no amount of walking will stem the tide of reality (those committed to their hyper-exercise routines notwithstanding). I’m not sure what I’m saying here other than this – I am getting old, and that notion is beginning to take root in a way that cannot be refuted any longer. I look old, feel old, and not too long from now there will be little doubt within an instant of observation how this is fundamentally true, and to me whatever I might have done requiring youthful energy is not going to happen now.
I understand that old age is a useful time for refection, but I resist that notion by writing about the here and now. There will be plenty of time for wallowing in the past later.
At West Natick the guy sitting at the window end of this seat stands to leave, and now I have this two-seater to myself. I resist the temptation to sit against the window – which is what I would do if the train were still collecting passengers. Instead I’m luxuriating right in the middle of the double seat, sitting with lots of elbowroom and an inflated sense of personal space beyond.
We leave West Natick at 5:01, which means that I’ll arrive at Ashland station no sooner than 5:09, and that is too late if I’m to make a 13 minute walk home and a 25 minute drive east to South Natick. So I’ll see if Sue is home. Perhaps she can pick me up at the station.
