Here I am in the train station, sitting cross-legged on the marbled floor with my backpack (Daisuke) and my laptop (Kokuyoku) to my left and a great support column at my back. To my right rests a folded-down Wendy's bag, in which are the nonedible remnants of my breakfast, consumed at four p.m.: a junior bacon cheeseburger and a small chocolate frosty. The frosty was an unpleasant indulgence, and its consumption inappropriately timed, and the cheeseburger had, upon my unwrapping of it, little to recommend itself beyond the two and a half sandwich length strips of bacon and its lingering warmth; the bun had been smushed by greasy fingers, and there was a large depression in the center of it, not to mention that the sandwich had been sloppily packaged and was falling apart before I even began eating it. Beside the bag rests my tiny Penguin 60s edition of four of Montaigne's essays; the Rabbit is presently located between pages sixty and sixty-one, marking my place. If I could obtain an internet connexion, I would most likely be catching up on emails that have been neglected for months, interspersing that task with the pointless browsing and rebrowsing of various social media sits; as it is, I cannot, at least not without relocating to another pillar, and as a result have been reading.
It is drafty here; the doors at the end of the station keep opening and closing, sending gusts of cool air my way. I am considering obtaining coffee, more of it, simply for the warmth and the excuse to settle myself at a corner table in a quieter side shop. The main station is like a gong, constantly reverberating with its own noise. Sounds become larger here — they grow, warble, expand into the cavernous room and return muffled to the undiscerning ears of its occupants. My watch tells me I have three hours and nine minutes remaining to spend in this place, but my head aches from the four hours and seven minutes I have already passed within its walls. There is a book store here, a little pseudo-convenience shop shoved up against a few shelves of erotica and cheap novels. Of course, cheap in this context means lame: when it comes to money, the store is primed for extortion; barring the classics shelf wedged in the back left corner between sports and biography and the children's shelf lining the right wall, it is primarily filled with outrageously priced trash. However, I was sorely tempted by two particular volumes in the classics collection, and a third in the biographies: a lovely gilt-edged hard cover edition of War and Peace first caught my eye, and after that, a hefty blue tome — paperback, but still attractive: Gone With the Wind, followed by Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. For some time I vacillated between the three, but could not justify spending twenty-five dollars for a single book, for myself, without having entered the store intending to anything of the sort. The resulting resolution involved withdrawing my familiar little Montaigne from Daisuke and cracking its cover. Had I anticipated such a delay I certainly would have selected a few titles to carry along with me for perusal over the course of the afternoon; however, I am not without either reading or writing material and am thus without legitimate grounds for complaint.
My desire to read Gone With the Wind is whetted, though, and I am sleepy and uncomfortable enough that Montaigne is not entirely making sense. Hence the blog post, drafted first in the Logbook because I happen to like writing that way. Pens are at times more conducive to blogging than keyboards.
From the opposite wall a sultry blonde is looking up with a surprised expression and an open mouth from her oversized burger; she is clad in a sleeveless purple dress and is adorned with gaudy earings and a partial forearm's length of bangles. "Swarovski", the letters on the bottom of the right corner of the banner proclaim. The jewelry is presumably intended to look appealing. I think it looks like she was trying far too hard.
~*~
There are two hours and thirty-two minutes yet until departure time; I am still considering coffee, but have not ventured from my spot. Despite the people milling about and the obviously public nature of the station, something about the height of the ceiling and the quality of the ambient sound makes me feel acutely the sense of being small, alone, and overlooked. It is an interesting sensation, and every time I am here I savour it. The besetting loneliness (and, at the same time, liberty) of solitary travel is to be sometimes loathed, sometimes endured, and sometimes treasured; today I am doing all three at once.
~*~
A trip to the water closet and a delay in the line at Wendy's have shaved away approximately twenty minutes from the wait. My coffee is warm, not hot, and tastes unusually despicable — the cup was filled with the dregs of two pots, and the employees were so hassled by the customer volume that I had not the heart to demand fresh liquid and properly heated coffee. So now I am sitting by the window, enjoying the diminished noise and the table claimed all to myself, and enjoying equally my lack of enjoyment of the nauseating brew in front of me. It is the stuff of which small adventures are made, and it has me thinking again of travel, of the appeal of setting out with a bag and a notebook and a rolling ball pen, along with the requisite laptop, and running. Placelessness is addictive. The din of train stations, the loneliness of airports at three a.m., the rocking and clanking of train wheels and the sense of falling that accompanies the tilting of the plane after take-off, the sunrise viewed through bleary eyes and the filth-flecked window of a fast food joint and from over a parfait, collapsing on a station bench after three sleepless nights and a megadose of caffeine on an empty stomach, buying a hamburger to satiate rampant hunger and sitting on a low stone wall to eat, bite by satisfying bite, in the company of strangers, walking along a city street as dusk falls and realising that all direction has been lost...
Just now a heavyset black woman wearing a long quilted coat approached my table, pushing a wire grocery basket of candy bars, and asked if I would by one — "for a dollar," she said, without meeting my eyes, "cuz I'm tryin' to get somethin to eat." I hesitated, then traded a dollar bill for a bar; she laid her three varieties out on the table for me to choose from: caramel, almond, and rice crispy; I chose caramel. She left the restaurant as soon as the transaction had been made, rising from the chair opposite me and calling a thank you over her shoulder as she wheeled her basket out into the main station. I laid the candy bar on top of my bag and picked up my pen once again, contemplating all the while how that would make a delightful strategy for terrorists, selling explosives as candy bars to unsuspecting passengers, and debating whether I ought to check the contents of the wrapper just to be certain. The idea is nothing short of ridiculous, I know, but I would be distinctly amused — were I still alive to see the humour — if my bag exploded. However, it is likely that anything so extraordinary will happen, especially since she has returned to Wendy's holding a sandwich in a takeout container. I admit to some surprise, as I did not think she actually wanted the money for food.
~*~
In exactly one hour my train is scheduled to depart. My coffee is now cool; my back has joined my head in aching and is making breathing painful; the scruffy young man sitting several tables away is speaking loudly of vomit. I am thinking of baking projects and mulling over what will happen when I arrive at my family's housel when I look up, pressing my fingertips against the bridge of my nose in an attempt to relieve the headache, I see an overflowing waste can, and the coinciding of image and thought seems absurdly appropriate. It will be late when I arrive tonight, but I assume that some people will be awake all the same. Depending on what is in the pantry I may start a cooking enterprise in consideration of the following morning — they will have a proper breakfast when they wake, and not a one will have to lift a finger to work for it. I review my options: muffins, omelet, pancakes, cake, quiche, muesli. There are others, of course, but an assessment of the kitchen's contents must necessarily precede plans for action.
My train is not yet on the board in the main station; it is still displaying trains scheduled from the hour of five p.m. It is seven twenty-nine now. I hope my train is not late.
Alex Goot's cover of Taylor Swift's "22" is alternating in my head with Against the Current's cover of The 1975's "Chocolate". There are so many interesting people here, demanding observation, and there is something about the noisy and impersonal air of travel that makes me wish to impulsively strike up conversations with various strangers happening by. That boy is cute and looks reasonably intelligent, and his hat suits his face; those girls — what private joke has amused them so, that they are giggling together like that?; the older gentleman in the trench coat is short enough and dignified enough to set me wondering whether he is either a disguised leader who has been deposed from his position and become a wicked villain or if he is a respectable businessman who would make a worthy acquaintance; her sense of style is impeccable. Everyone is fair game in this crowded loneliness. People here are unknown factors, an afternoon's entertainment, subjects for social experimentation, or personalities with whom transient acquaintance might be made; they are books from which to learn lessons. There are no rules in this place but those a person imposes upon himself, no social standard, nothing but people, people, people, all thrust from their familiar bubble into one massive arena, and at times one has the feeling that anything is possible with anyone.
It is eight oh six, and in nine minutes my train boards.
I always like watching people. People are interesting.
ReplyDeleteYour Koala