Is it the White People's Express or the Meathead Express? It's tough to decide; and I'm not quite sure it matters. Suffice it to say the man to my right "watched" an action movie on his laptop as he scanned his smartphone and ate popcorn, all the while coughing, drinking bottled water, with earbuds in the quiet car on last night's 6:54. I left him heading west to Chatham, thankful I wasn't going to Morris County.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Townies
I'm told by a friend I jokingly asked last week -- a lifelong resident of Pearl River, NY -- that even if you grow up in a town and leave for college and move away for 30 years before returning in midlife, you are still a townie. Why do I hope so?
It's a cacophony of coughing, a surround sound symphony of hacking lungs on this Friday morning 8:48 express. They're coming from every side and angle but the window and, even then, appeal for an end run around your shoulder and arm rest.
It's a cacophony of coughing, a surround sound symphony of hacking lungs on this Friday morning 8:48 express. They're coming from every side and angle but the window and, even then, appeal for an end run around your shoulder and arm rest.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Front of the Car Triptych
It is a dizzyingly odd, strangely disquieting and disorienting perspective to sit in the fourth row of the first Arrow car on the 8:48, with the sights and the landmarks rushing by the front window and each side, a crazy quilt panoramic triptych. A different perspective even then the single view of the driver, and so very different from driving a car. The rising mid-February sun climbs in the right side of the train, pouring in from the south.
"Can you let me out?," the well-spoken Asian student to my left asks before Newark Broad Street. Nary a please, an excuse me or pardon me. So goes courtesy, so goes civil discourse.
Looking out at the deteriorated, 110-year-old walls of the Newark/Roseville cut, and later, Harrison, you wonder how will we ever get anything built again?
More simply, why the Morris & Essex? Why not Morris & Hudson? Or Morris, Union and Essex? All the affluent white people. Where do they all come from?
"Can you let me out?," the well-spoken Asian student to my left asks before Newark Broad Street. Nary a please, an excuse me or pardon me. So goes courtesy, so goes civil discourse.
Looking out at the deteriorated, 110-year-old walls of the Newark/Roseville cut, and later, Harrison, you wonder how will we ever get anything built again?
More simply, why the Morris & Essex? Why not Morris & Hudson? Or Morris, Union and Essex? All the affluent white people. Where do they all come from?
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Teardowns and Davaning
I love looking out at my old Huntley neighborhood in the morning. Spotting the occasional, unmistakable teardown. Seeing the twinkling light or the darkened house. Thinking and reflecting. Remembering putting pennies down on the track and running away for cover and coming back for the bent remnant. Remembering the devilish freedom of mischief night. Of Halloween, a two-day celebration. A disastrous, abandoned backyard sleepover in a tent below these same tracks, with Kurt Hall and another boy whose face I can half discern, but not his name; they who loved to spit and conduct liquid materials experiments a little too much.
I saw a woman today on the 8:48, my regular, after Millburn, as we made the express run to Newark. She was standing and I was about to offer her the empty seat next to mine, when I saw she was reading a red leather bound book. But when I saw her davaning, bending and bowing to God, I thought it best not to disturb her.
These same hills, these same Orange ridges. You used to be able to take a train to Binghamton or Buffalo or Chicago, right here from Summit. In a way, there was more commerce then, certainly along this right of way, this corridor of passengers and sidings, industry and freight.
I saw a woman today on the 8:48, my regular, after Millburn, as we made the express run to Newark. She was standing and I was about to offer her the empty seat next to mine, when I saw she was reading a red leather bound book. But when I saw her davaning, bending and bowing to God, I thought it best not to disturb her.
These same hills, these same Orange ridges. You used to be able to take a train to Binghamton or Buffalo or Chicago, right here from Summit. In a way, there was more commerce then, certainly along this right of way, this corridor of passengers and sidings, industry and freight.
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