Round Trip
Have you ever traveled to one place and ended up in another? I did yesterday. I decided to take a commuter train to Boston from Plymouth, a place known as America's home town. I thought I would avoid the ordeal of inbound city traffic and sudden exit signs I sometimes miss and end up going over a bridge to Charlestown or to Logan Airport.
I had a hunch where the train station was in Plymouth. I was wrong twice. I finally asked someone for directions while they were getting out of their car. She said I was very close and I soon found the deserted station. No cars. No people. But a train was parked several hundred feet down the track and its engine was running.
I did find a young man with long blond hair and a backpack huddled in a seat behind a wind screen. He had dark rings under his eyes and had a weary travelers look that made him seem harmless in this deserted setting.
The train was far enough away with lights on and looked a little menacing. If I made the wrong move it would come speeding down the track and somehow threaten me. I don't know how, but that was how it felt, a brooding train.
Soon an auto pulled up and unloaded its passenger, an elderly lady, dressed up the way elderly ladies can dress up looking like the 1930's. The train pulled in and I boarded and found a seat.
Since it was the starting point for the train, we were the only passengers. I sat near the old lady and settled in. It was years since I had used a railroad. A slight rise of excitement was present, but not enough to say I was excited. It was more an immersion in memories of train travel in the past.
The ticket taker appeared in a blue uniform with the usual round stiff hat with the small bill and sold me a ticket without ceremony. He was my first clue that something unusual was going to happen . He seemed too familiar to be real. How could he know it was my first railroad ride in a long time?
The train pulled out slowly and began to pick up speed but not the degree of speed I was expecting. I began thinking about my car. Was it safe in a deserted train station parking lot? No tires and graffiti ran through my mind and out again as I took in the bleak landscape never seen from my car on the highway.
Trains don't really improve the landscape and seem to travel through the more commercial section of towns. Home owners near the tracks are obviously reminded of their location several times a day.
Town after town slipped by and the further away from my car the more I thought about it and the more I felt out of place on this supposedly "good idea" trip. I did what I could to calm my jumpy nature and settled into the motion and the mechanical rhythms of train travel.
Arriving at South Station, I found myself doubting my choice about everything I came to Boston to accomplish.
The waiting room had tables and chairs with vendors sprinkled around the periphery and several in the center. People in train stations and airports have that deep 'in limbo' demeanor that I think might be how it feels just after your last breath is taken and you await instructions from above.
I walked around in circles for while thinking about my next move. There was something moving inside of my psyche that made proceeding impossible. I had planned to to take the subway to Cambridge and see a play that evening.
My car continued to invade my thinking. What if I came back at 10:30 that night and the car was trashed. I forgot my cell phone and there I would be in a deserted parking lot.
I walked outside to get some fresh air and found the Boston business district's high rise buildings gathered in front of me like the ice age movement of glaciers threatening my smallness. I had been in the city for only ten minutes and I already felt alone, unknown, one of many going and coming.
Two homeless men had piled up their belongings on either side of the entrance. One had lowered his pants and was scratching his behind.
I attempted to enter the concourse leading to the subway to Cambridge. I came up against an automatic ticket dispenser with instructions that seemed an excess of words about something as simple as procuring a subway ticket. People came and stood before the instructions for a time and wandered away and then returned and moved toward the dispenser, while those familiar with the process flashed by and into the underground.
I could have overcome my hesitancy to take action. I seemed to not want to. I returned to the waiting room and had a cheese danish. I sat down. A man was cooing at the one pigeon scavenging the waiting room floor. Two men were slumped in the hard chairs at a table laughing hysterically about a "he said " and then "she said" event. A man was talking on his cell phone about his root canal visit to his dentist. Two 20ish women were looking at a wedding issue of a fashion magazine.
I was thinking about how helpless I was in this gathering of traveling souls and enterprise surrounding me. The fact that the high rise commercial buildings had intimidated me troubled me. I used to know city life. Now it was alien to me, threatening even.
How did I get out so far from my familiar path to the city? How was I going to process and get beyond the unfamiliar humanity that surrounded me in the train station. I was cold and colder still each time the automatic doors to the railroad platform opened and cold wind rushed in and across the waiting room.
How was I going to overcome this pervasive inertia that had begun to rule me against my better judgment? I began to imagine collapsing from the stress and EMT's standing around me with onlookers nodding in some kind of agreement about me.
My heart beat was starting to increase. I tried to meditate the increase down and succeeded.
I bought a newspaper and tried to read just to distract my mind. A woman sat down in an angled out chair at my table. I tried not to look at her. I did not want to talk. I began looking for interesting phrases or imagery in news stories and underlining them. That seemed to work for a while. But the lingering feeling of a caught fish on a dock breathing hard began to possess me.
Where was the familiar? How could I have made this mistake? How could I not know that I now depend upon the familiar for my well being? The only answer was to distract myself completely.
I asked the book store vendor for a sheet of blank paper. I had a thought earlier in the day to the effect that says- We do not want money, money wants us, a paradigm shift,if you will, placing the burden on money for all that happens to us. It worked. When I was finished it was close to the time of the return trip to Plymouth.
In the last few minutes I closely observed a family of three. A mother, father, and a son about 7 years old. They were paying lots of attention to him. He was beaming and his father was teasing him and poking him in the ribs. At one point in the freedom of the moment the boy said something to the mother she did not like. He started laughing hard to cover up his embarrassment. He continued to laugh long after it was funny and his mother became very angry. The boy was confused and his father saw his confusion and took him for a walk to calm down.
I suddenly realized that this was the human predicament. I was delivered to this point of departure and arrival of hundreds of people's lives just living as best they could.
An old man buried in winter clothing and a corduroy hat walked oddly around looking a little annoyed and impatient. A fat woman marched behind a fat man walking like an automaton looking straight ahead. Teenage girls in a large group swooped into the station and out like a flock of birds.
It was all before me to examine and my little interior drama joined in the tableau of human activity.
If I had just died and this was the waiting room where I was a witness to a bit of life before moving on I would have understood it. As it was, I stumbled into an awareness about changes that are taking place in my nature, perhaps an awareness that a departure from familiar routines have a risk and benefits.
Measuring your comfort zone and assessing what is essential to that comfort zone was the lesson of the adventure.
The return ride was uneventful. The same ticket taker punched my ticket and smiled. My car was safe and sound. My trip home was one of my most eagerly anticipated.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig!
posted by CRC @ 6:08 PM
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