Thursday, February 3, 2005, 4:00pm
Thursday, February 3, 2005, 4:00pm
Finally somebody on this train is holding up his end of a one-way conversation without the excuse of a cell phone.
I’m not sure who this guy thinks is listening, but at least I can have the satisfaction of knowing that at least one yakker can still mumble and talk to himself in the old fashion schizophrenic sort of way. This of course is not to say that I am making fun of the poor fellow – I am actually mocking all those people aboard the train addicted to cell phones. There is only just so much I want to hear about diaper rash and colonoscopies.
The crazy guy has gone to sleep or left, I can’t tell which. I’m guessing he’s gone since the conversation he was having seemed like the sort of endless loop that does not simply stop. I suppose the role of the conductor has its ups and downs – encounters with somebody having no idea where he is, where he’s been, or where he’s headed being one of the many less pleasant chores. Yet to some extent I suppose this describes dealing with me as well – since I can’t often see where the train is heading through the night, and can say nothing about the future with absolute certainty.
My mom had her heart procedure this afternoon, and I haven’t heard anything….
Before I can finish this thought, a blast from two departing locomotives briefly distracts my attention. Two trains are leaving South Station at once. Perhaps the news tonight will be good and she has survived and been pronounced well enough to go home – unlike my dad who in early 2001 did not survive this same sort of cardiac catheterization procedure and instead wound up dead on the operating table.
The thought of those details has me drifting elsewhere. I suppose we all can drift into a dream world of some sort when needed.
Most of us know the language, norms and mannerisms of the outside world well enough to appear rational – especially when we do not speak too often in ways that might reveal just how separate we really are from this world. In reality we live within our own constructions of reality.
This is not to say that there is no real world out there. It’s just that there is nothing about it – in my own experience – that goes beyond what I myself have absorbed. So in effect the world is no bigger than my sense of it. Individual lives interact where there is a common experience, but the experience is nonetheless entirely personal and the memories entirely my own – even when others share a similar viewpoint. So the only difference between that crazy guy and my own experience is how I remain in better communication with other people.
Alongside the Pike we crawl into the Back Bay Tunnel. A quick look at the old Hancock Tower was too quick to see if the current dreary weather has its own beacon color – what is the color for neither hot nor cold, nor raining but instead misting and damp and miserable?
Rolling farther west the mist turns to a light rain bringing wiper blades out onto the windshields of passing cars and trucks. Along the outside of this rail car window thin rivulets of water converge and drain away in spurts. Darkness is gaining a foothold. It should still be brightly sunlit, yet the sun has punched its card and checked out early.
At our current pace I will not make it home in time for my Thursday group meeting – not even close. Into the Allston rail yards we pick up speed and at this newer pace we’ll arrive at Ashland Station in plenty of time.
Yet I will know this and everything else for sure only after it has happened – despite my experience and wishful thinking and connections with the outside world.
