Found

There are moments now and then where I pause throughout the day. They aren't planned and, more often than not, are a surprise to me. They can strike while I am at work, at home, or on the train. That last place there: that is where I am now and where I was just caught with one.

I am thankful and grateful for my life as it is right now. It's not perfect. But I realize it doesn't have to be. I have worked hard and struggled to be self-sufficient and make a life for myself. Mission accomplished. There is no end-game. There is no demarcation of success. My personal victories have been worth celebrating throughout my life. I am a composite of good and bad. Pretty and ugly. Lucky and unlucky. But I am glad life isn't "fair." Because if I had as much bad happen to me as good, I would be much worse off.

Wait

Sometimes it's the wait that kills you. It doesn't matter what you are waiting for, be at a train station, a doctors office or in line waiting for a sandwich. There are so few actual activities we get to do in life. Most of our time is spent planning for a thing, preparing for a thing, and learning from it afterwards. It's like the divers in the summer Olympics who spend years and years in order to perform a two-second controlled fall into water. 

They spend their whole lives sacrificing, and exercising, and eating right and practicing for hours and hours to learn how to fall just right. All for those two seconds. Afterwards, if done right they will talk about those two seconds for years to come. It is like having huge book ends for only one book on the shelf. It makes no sense.

Different

The later 6:00PM train seems as busy as the regular rush hour trains. Shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, the slow rock of the train makes everyone wobble-dance in unison. 

The guy to my left is reading political feeds on the New York Times. It's amazing what people find interesting, but more power to him. He looks kind of boring, but I bet he tears off that tan trench coat when he gets home and rocks out to Gloria Gaynor. (At least that is the home life I have given him.)

I need a brightly colored coat I think. Red or blue wool. Everyone around me is gray and black. We look like carbon copies of each other and we are all blending together. One large, swaying group of black-coated funeral partiers.

Repeat

It is worse than any Déjà Vu feeling I have ever had. That feeling is a slightly unsettling, yet whimsical, feeling that I am simply repeating the same thing. What I am feeling instead is a more disturbing sensation that most of my days are exactly the same even though they are different.

There is a struggle to pull myself out of bed at 5:27am after my snooze button goes off for the third time. Even my commute doesn't differ much. Lately it feels like the same cast of characters who sit in the same place, like it's an elementary school cafeteria and this is a "my spot" situation. 

You have bible guy, the tired mom with her ten-dollars-at-Goodwill baby stroller, the preppy couple who giggles the whole ride, the large girl who smashes herself against the glass and spends about 37 minutes of her commute apologizing to anyone who sits next to her for not leaving them much room. There is loud snoring guy over there. Clown makeup girl is nearby. 

I think I have seen these people enough times that we should probably introduce ourselves. Interesting website idea: Social Commute. Sign in when you ride and get to know people. Because why not?

Mass texting

Me and like seven people around me as furiously texting. It's like we are reporters sending in breaking news.  Only the news isn't relevant to anyone: 

"Girl Pairs Boots with Hideous Purse."

"Two Indian men meet and struggle to pronounce each other's names." (Seriously.. )

"Manly blue collar guy is reading 'Hunger Games.'"

It is one stop away from mine and the train just flushed half of its humans onto the platform. It's a large Park & Ride, so it makes sense.

Now I am texting alone.  I mean: 

"Lonely man finds friendship in technology."

Wrong

I'm sure you wanted the whole train to hear your wife reminding you to get bread on the way home. This is a pride point up there with getting a new home or a job. But none of us around you care. There is this speaker thing on the top-front of your phone, you see, that when held against your ear, makes your conversation private and intimate.

Talking to your phone a foot from your face, then holding it up on speakerphone near the side of your head is what we in the industry call, "Misuse of Technology," aka: you're doing it wrong.

Otherwise the guy across from me is almost done with the bible. 

I wonder what he will do afterwards. Will he start over? Start putting his teachings to use? Does he know there is no sequel? It's been like 400 years since that version (KJ) was updated, perhaps it's time for a solid bible Part 3. Our society loves trilogies. So we could have the old, the new, and the future testaments. 

The future testament could be a dystopian take on a society where religion is misunderstood, abused, and leaned on to oppress and condemn people who are not the same. It chronicles the time when a deity, or god, infuses himself across the people and we, now all gods ourself, believe in nothing but our own self-righteousness and ideals. We smite those who say otherwise. We praise what we like. We doom what we don't like, like a child banishing his vegetables to a trash can hell regardless of how healthy they might be.

Maybe we are all still ghostwriting this third testament now. Judging and dooming and being too holy to help. 

This book won't be released unfortunately; the pious don't chronicle.

Orgy

So many people on the 4:45 train out of downtown today that we are all much closer friends now.  It's just all grabass and grinding on the MAX for certain.

In other news I will require a shower upon arriving at home. I loathe crowds. I don't get anxious so much as stabby. Without my music in my ears and this blog, I would probably be really upset right now. Thank goodness got the calming influence of Alcest: Zen. Dreamy. Ahh.

Forget two feet of space, it's barely two inches right now. The culprit? Train ahead of us had unruly passengers and held up that train for about 20 minutes this throwing everything off. We all want to thank them personally. 

Rank

There are certain levels of entitlement I see daily. Most of it comes from young women, old women, business men, mothers, fathers, and college students.

One group that rarely, if ever, seems to get up in arms while riding are old guys. They often times give up their seat, or stay seated, sometimes snoring away leaning against a window (or in one case leaning against another person.) but they are furniture on the train.

One of the worst offenders, however, are the power-business women in their late 40s or early 50s. Usually in a pantsuit carrying two bags (purse and laptop) they need extra space. The one lady this morning told a five year old to pipe down from talking because she had to take a call, then asked me f I could let her sit down so she could work on her tablet. 

My reply, "Pipe down, I'm trying to write here."

Control

If you decide to bring a bag with you onto the train, please try to pick one that you are able to wield ablely without smashing into your fellow riders. 

The first time you hit me in the face with that nylon zippered collection of text books, I smarted and nudged it away from me.

The second time I added an, "excuse me."

The third time my maneuvering of you a foot away from me with a push was my way of keeping you able to chew solid food. 

A fourth time, if it happened, it would be a party on board this train with rainbow arcs of paper, pens, and your screams of, "what are you doing to my backpack crazy man?!"

I would just give you a toothy grin and say, "Justice!"

Studying

The woman sitting across from me has 3x5 notecards with tons of medical terms on them. The stack of cards is easily an inch or so thick. It brings me back to my high school years helping my mom study for her nursing classes with flash cards just like that.

The guy in a hoodie next to her seems interested and has been leering over her shoulder for a long time. I keep expecting him to slip and say, "oh that's a hard one," and make her jump.

So many people are on this train so early. It's insane to think of how many people are up and around so early like I have to be. I am so not a morning person. Not even a little. I am so much more of a night owl and miss it sometimes.

Disability

Apparently having children is the new disability. These two young moms probably in their early 20s are not seniors, therefore I can only think they are disabled. That is why those seats are there.

So that's fantastic.

Now if could just get the weather to cooperate and stop being so chilly in the mornings. My hands shouldn't be all pink and numb at six in the morning. I'm fragile, damn it.

Wee! Oh and.. Happy New Year, redux.

Rude

There is and ugly fucker behind me reading over my shoulder. My guess is that there isn't nearly enough excitement in his own life, and he needs to eavesdrop like a voyuer on others to live vicariously. It's pretty sad really. 

I am listening to a younger guy give a long stream of commentary regarding the state of technology to this very bored-looking older lady. He is forcing drivel opinion into her ear. The look on her face is one of, "please let my stop be next!"

Stories

I look at the faces of people I ride with sometimes and am curious about their stories. Happiness, sadness, love, loss.. all of these feelings and more are etched and burned into the canvas of their heads, mostly in the eyes.

There is a guy in a green trench coat and khaki pants who looks extremely dispondent and lost. He barely looks up, and the one time I noticed him do so, there was a depth to his expression that I felt like a heavy weight on my chest. I wonder who or what went wrong in his life to look so pained. I can't tell him that it gets better, because sometimes it just doesn't.

There is a girl who looks tired. The bags under her young eyes and slope to her shoulders makes me wonder if she is a young mother. She has a backpack, so my guess is that she is also a student, but those creases don't come from studying alone. No, those are earned from sleepless nights and late feedings. Makes me want to tell her to stop worrying about being something important someday, that she already is: a mom.

It is quite a scene right now. But this is all merely interpretation, And I am listening to a rather bummer of a playlist on my phone. Perhaps the soundtrack is bleeding into them.

Preach

Is there some mass return to religion of which I am unaware? No fewer than five (5!) open bibles in spitting distance here. And yes, that is the unit of distance I chose. Maybe it's this new pope who has inspired a return, maybe we can all blame Miley Cyrus for getting us to a magic hedonistic threshold that had people say, "Enough is enough! Too much vagina on television! Where is my bible!"

Well it is Friday. And the train is sparsely populated. I can't wait for Monday: first full week of the year, first day of school for many, and staff back to full strength after 2-3 weeks of miscellaneous skeleton crews. Today I hope goes quickly.

Many

I wonder what it would be like in a world where media did not exist. Music had to be enjoyed live, stories had to be told by one person to the next, and news traveled by word of mouth alone.

There would be many draw backs, but I would love to see humans interacting with one another. Instead I am on a train with hundreds of people reading, listening to music, and using their mobile devices. I am surrounded by so many, yet very much alone out in society.

Strange how all of these things meant to bring us together separate us so much.

First

Morning today includes a lot of people on this train that are very much at the tail end of many days of holiday cheer. It's as though they collectively forgot what 6AM looked like. Cheeks are flushed, hair is shower-matted, and expressions are blank canvases. 

I have collectively decided that 2014 will be amazing for everyone. I will try to make is so for anyone I meet. Ultimately we are the person we decide to be. It's not even fake it until you make it, it's about deciding to be, in your head, the person you want to be. 

People who act moody, depressed and sullen attract attention from family and friends, but it's the same a parent gives a screaming baby: they do whatever they can just to calm the noise! 

Be happy, people. Life isn't a dress rehearsal. None of us get out of it alive either...set it on fire!