A very long and tiring week behind me, I really should find something amazing and fun and borderline illegal to do, but all I want to do is nap right now.
Think I will snag a beer and see if my neighbor wants to throw around a football.
Oh, there's nothing going on here on the train aside from two hipsters arguing about taxes. One just said, "Sales tax is so passe."
I don't have the heart to tell her that saying something is passe is passe.
The "relief" of Friday escapes me. People shouldn't spend 71.4% of their lives waiting for one day. Saturday: the magic day to enjoy your "life" you toiled over to earn. Because let's get real, who really relaxes on Sunday? You can't get any meaningful errands done like bank, dmv, Deq, passport office or such, and you have the thought of work tomorrow looming, preventing you from evening hijinx.
People really need to figure out a way to enjoy the hours during the week, too. Hell, enjoy yourself at work. Resist the urge to say TGIF today. Buck the trend and say tgim on Monday.
The baby behind me is laughing but doesn't sound like joyful laughter.
Instead it sounds like someone being forced to giggle with a gun pointed at their head. Laughs interspersed with sobs.
Very creepy.
Tomorrow is Friday... neat.
It's no mystery that the seats are small on the train. When I sat down, the guy against the window squished himself in to get a part of himself off my seat.
But gradually over the last few stops he has exhaled and begun to ooze into my space.
Listening to Billy Collins on Spotify. Trying to ignore the kid on the lap of his mom across the aisle. He seems intent on breaking his mom's jaw with the back of his little head. She is bobbing and weaving deftly.
This new schedule is being good to me. Lots better seating on the train, but not as much in the way of hijinx.
Going to lean back and listen to Elbow and go over some projects in my head.
The voice tone of the girl sitting across from me rakes my eardrums. Doubly bad is the fact that she doesn't seem to require the human need to breathe, and has been an unending stream of breathy, wheezy dialogue since her stupid face got on the train about seven stops ago.
Come on! Breathe...is she going for a record of some sort?
Grr.
For whatever reason, when I leave work, the train pulls up to my stop when I am a block away. I watch trimet.org from work, have the app on my phone, and mostly just leave when I can.
No matter what, I find myself sprinting a block every day to catch it. Normally not a problem, but with my back it was ooh, eeh, ooh, ahh..each step.
Behind me two college kids are bitching about having to wake up at 7:30am for a class. Good lord the torture! I remember those days, but now I wish I could sleep in some days that late.
There is an older guy here: bald, black shirt and khakis, also an SS tattoo on his neck. Not sure what state of mind one has to get to think this is a good idea.
Also, if you wear a long, tan trench coat, wear pants. I see your shorts, but from behind you look like a flasher.
Stop it.
8am. I park a little farther away, but otherwise it feels the same. My commute home should prove interesting, too. Plenty of seating on this later train as well. Guess I missed the huge morning rush.
I am grateful I got this coat as a gift from my family. It's the weather-proof shell of another jacket, and it is doing a great job of repelling the autumn rain. I am quite warm and dry as a result.
All the windows are foggy on the train. In the words of my dad when the car windows did the same, "alright, who's breathing?!"
Needed to bring my car today, unsure of traffic I left at my usual time.
Got downtown 45 minutes too early... not too bad. Going to have breakfast...and relax before diving into my workload.
It's so awkward when you offer up your seat to a lady and she says no thanks. Figured she might be just going a stop or two, but nope...she just wanted to stand.
Not sure why it annoys me.
Okay I am over it.
I need to run errands tonight. Haircut, straplocks for my bass, catfood, gas in the car, bleh... wee!
This is my last morning at this time on the train. Just as I was beginning to recognize faces, but that isn't a huge deal.
Tomorrow I will drive my car to work so I can leave straight from work to head to the gig. Then next week I will be on a modified schedule.
Sleeping a little longer each morning will help my overall mental state. Hopefully that translates to better work, happier me, and less stress.
The train is a combination of body odor and Indian food. Have yet to determine if its the same guy or not.
Work has been odd. My boss shifts gears between slathering tons of work on me with a frenzied haste, and telling me to relax and take one thing at a time.
Friday is only two days away.
Your bag is enormous. Yes, you college kid. And you, older business guy. Please be aware of your girth when it is slung over your shoulder.
Take it off on the train. If you can't take it off, stand the hell still and stop roaming and turning because you are hitting people.
Your annoyed look when I pushed your bag off my neck was informational.
Deal.
It doesn't matter what the schedule says, it doesn't even matter if you can see another train down the line. You have secret knowledge that the train pulling up is your train, the only train, the last train ever.
They (the cosmic "they") even stopped all trains; dumping out barrels of cheese-colored paint for the hand rails, and destroying that small German company that makes the brake cables. All to guarantee that no train will ever stop here again.
And you are certain there is a small army of leathery rail workers with striped hats waiting with picks and dynamite to tear up track and timber behind this train.
These must be the reasons why you fillpack and shove your way rudely at 5:22PM on this obscure September Tuesday.
I read. I consume a lot of books in order to keep my mind active, and my imagination young. However I am skeptical when there are two guys giving away free books at the train station. I wanted to grill them on their organization and what the book was about, but saw my train coming and opted for a brief, "No, thank you."
Usually when someone is knitting on the train, it is just a hat or the beginnings of a scarf (what I call the 'learning rectangle'), but this lady is putting the finishing touches on what looks like a onesie or a sweater. It looks really soft and complicated.
The human brain I feel is designed to attempt to make patterns of everything. It is a phenomenon known as matrixing. Today's group of people doesn't fit at all together and my brain hurts.
I take that back, everyone looks like they are at the end of their rope. Monday? Feels ominous.
I guess there is a Timbers game today since there are so many walking billboards; people not just wearing team gear, but replica jerseys (sponsors and all.)
Hey, it's Friday, and freakin' gorgeous outside. I need a haircut, a beer, and a Five Guys burger. Then... more bass.
I feel like Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down. Not because I want to go on a social rampage, but that the only thing in my backpack is my lunch. Yeah.. random.
I have broad shoulders, the problem with this is that I am not skinny left to right. When a skinny little guy sits next to me, then gets annoyed and starts nudging me over, I get a little gruff. I rotate my shoulders to give me a leaner profile to be polite and he still leans into me.
I really want to puff up, sit back, am smash this guy, but I haven't had my OJ and banana yet so I am tired and nonconfrontational.
I'm officially terrified. I've played in front of people before, I can read music, but I didn't realize the gig I am playing next Friday will be two hours long, and require me to learn 20 new songs I've never heard in only one week.
So instead of observing my commute, I am reading the set list,and listening to the album now (thankfully Spotify has the CD Baby catalogue and I was able to get the whole thing offline.)
I hope I do okay... I want to do right by this guy.
Not sure if the word exists yet, but this girl has a terrible hair cut. It's actually so bad it is making me angry.
It is bleach-blonde and black like a zebra, which is fine, but it is a mullet. And not just any mullet, but the front half is normal hair, and the rear is dreadlocks. Yes a dullet. Does she not have anyone who loves her who could convince her what a bad idea it was to do this?
And she is in a pantsuit a la Hillary Clinton. I'm so confused.
Bunch of guys standing up on the train. One seat available: next to a gorgeous woman. Nobody sits. Too intimidated? Are they only going one stop? No idea. I just shrug and sit down.
Getting mean stares from them now as though I siezed their opportunity. My message to them is: grow a set next time.
Americans are overweight. The seats on the train remind me of gradeschool desks without the desktop attached. So even people of proportional weight are hanging out on both sides.
Put five of them together, and you are on a very smashed bench of people.
Today starts my new training at work on the new product, and my stomach feels weird.
There is something about the yeasty dough and cold meat smell of a pizza shop that bring me back years when I worked at one, but more importantly spending time at them as a kid. It's amazing the flood of birthday parties and late night pizza and video games.
Childhood is so fast. I wish someone would have grabbed me by the ears and told me to enjoy it while is lasts. Then again, if I knew it was temporary, I may not have enjoyed it as much; anxious about the approaching end.
It's the endlessness that made it magic. Summers lasted a lifetime and I was convinced I would never be a grown-up.
Dammit.
So the latter half of the summer, there was this younger round-faced guy with big hockeystick sideburns who waited at a bus stop at the end of the block.
Usually he is in a kilt. Today, however, he is in cargo pants. Now its true that his kilt could be at the cleaners, but today is also twenty degrees cooler than its been in months.
Sitting next to me is a girl missing the lower half of her right arm. She is reading a book turning pages with her elbow. She has to lean forward to turn the page, so every few moments she looks as though she is really into the story.
I saw a blind man running full speed down the sidewalk running to catch his bus; his red and white stick clacking on the sidewalk uselessly.
I wondered how he knew he was running late.
It feels odd that my backpack that has served me all of my college life now carries a laptop and a lunch pail for work. I know it misses the books and folders and scantrons it used to cart all over.
To that end, I find it interesting that I now work for the company that owns ScanTrons, when I spent $40k worth college using them for tests.
It's a literate bunch here on the train this morning. Books, Kindles, magazines, a newspaper (quaint), and one gal reading a knitting book trying to figure out a pattern. Good times are being had, and I am the shlub using my phone instead.
I am going to Powells after work today. I had to go anyways, but somewhat amusing considering this cosmic reminder disguised as a sea of readers.
Thank Pope Gregory XIII it's Friday. I am not sure what tonight holds, but today was busy all day at work, and the train is not too packed at all.
Actually got the fun look at the next train of people seats.
I'm in a weird mood.
I felt an odd thing this morning as I sit on this train with a group of familiar strangers: connection. I am starting to recognize them as my shared daily riders, and kind of want to introduce myself to them.
Not out of community or social convention, but the selfish act of someone missing me if I stopped showing up one day. Is it such a bad thing to want to be memorable?
The girl in front of me has rainbow wristbands and is clutching a stuffed pink unicorn. Her pink Chuck Taylor shoes have the word PIMP written in Sharpie on the toe.
And the police just came down the train with a drug dog. It's Friday morning I guess. Obey, citizen.
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| Photo by Jesse Raley |
