Trains, Van Gogh, and Girls
November 4, 2005
Van Gogh is gone. I’m on another train. I love the rhythmic rolling of the springs on uneven rail. As a kid I’d lay on the tracks, their parallels touching, an infinite smoothness before me. So smooth, why do trains rock so? It soothes me, though there’s a part of me that doesn’t understand it.
Such a curious conveyance, a rush hour crowd of seasoned straphangers mime away the trip, some stand, some sit, by two, by three. Shiny shoes, expensive suits and extended accounts. I lean like a scolioid serpent giving my neighbor room without leaning too far into the aisle space.
A girl across from me, bobbed blonde hair a sweet seriousness on her furrowed brow, notices an older man standing. She offers her seat seeming embarrassed to be sitting. She’d gotten there early enough to have a seat, her long dangly jade earrings jangle at the collar of her irregular striped shirt of limes and greens. I look over nonchalantly, she’s writing too.
The older man did not take her seat. She was beautiful in her selflessness. To no one in particular he asked, “Do I look that old?”
Everyone within earshot laughed; to me he didn’t look very old at all. My first thought had been that she was being excessive.
“I’m sixty-nine years old†he stated meaning only.
Damn, he did look good for his age, bravo old standing guy!
NJ Transit trains have such warmth about them. The faux leather seats and the faux oak paneling made sense to someone once. They rile up sweet memories of holiday parade trips with my sisters and the Nolans just old enough to travel un-chaperoned. We struck out timidly fearless with the wild imagination of adolescence into a pre-Rudy New York City. Next it was Grateful Dead shows and CBGB’s adventures blurring years between.
My best memories of NYC train trips are with Kristine when she was six or seven, watching her eyes widen and her mind open, grasping the bigness of the world. There’s a great picture of her on my brother Michael’s shoulders standing under the Broadway street sign at Times Square her arms outstretched and yelling, “I’ll be backâ€.
She’s working on it.
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