Chapter 64.1: The PATH Most Taken

Riding on the PATH train this morning, while ensconced in the last forty pages of the slow but enjoyable anthology of Graham Greene works I've been reading for the past few weeks, I was jolted back to reality by the grinding and grating of the train. It slowed and stopped. Nothing to worry about -- happens from time to time. Then it began again, only this time with a nasty grinding sound like I've heard when my car is about ready to die. And on toward Christopher Street. Reading during the several minutes of windy, wavy travel is like resting with my thoughts on a hammock in a soft breeze: quickly forgotten until the next time you experience it. After people disembarked at Christopher Street, the train urged from the station once again. It barked and squealed in frustration before finally it moved. At Ninth Street, the movement was the same at first. Then, quite suddenly, the train jumped with a terrible crunching sound. Passengers looked at each other as if to say "What the fuck was that?" A man beside me was reading his book. Without looking up, he said, "That's not a good sound."

In my mind, I joked. "We finally shook off that brake we didn't need. Now we can really get moving!"

At 14th Street, we arrived -- brakes intact -- and I noticed far more people than usual disembarking with me. Seems they'd had enough too.

Chapter 63.8: What's Happening?

My train this morning was delayed -- a New York train ahead of it was about 15 minutes late -- so we were late into Hoboken. When we arrived, a large crowd congregated at the head of the stairs to the PATH trains below. I took another route down, but still met with a line of people. When I finally got onto the platform, I saw one 33rd Street train packed to the gills with people and crowds of humanity standing around, looking confused. I asked a man if any announcement had been made about the delay. "Two Amtrak trains are blocking the way into New York," he said. I nodded and my mind was awhirl. Was it worse than that? What would I find when I entered New York. July 7 was the anniversary of the underground attacks in London. Am I safe?

So far, I am. I don't know yet what happened. Perhaps it was just two trains blocking the way into New York. Or maybe it's simply Monday after people have taken vacation.

Chapter 63.7: Time! Gentlemen, Please

While walking from the train to the PATH this morning, I saw a guy with a t-shirt that said "Time is an invention." Brilliant.

Because it's true. Define time. What is it? It's a measurement, but of what? It's a construction we use to measure our past and our future. And time can be changed. Calendars are not static. We pick up a day every four years, a leap second every couple of years, because time as we define it is imperfect. Time is a human construct; God is timeless.

I mention God quite purposely, because there are wackos among us who believe that the earth has only existed for a few thousand years, not the hundreds of millions of years that science has proven. Many of these same wackos decry evolution calling it "just a theory." Time is a theory, too, but they don't seem to see it. Theory ... think about that word. What do you see in it? I see God, therein.

Chapter 60.5: Oui, Oui

I was coming home late last night after playing softball in Central Park. The PATH train was comfortably crowded — enough people to keep things interesting — and I had space for my personal bag of softball equipment and the team's collection of bases and extraneous stuff. I'd been on the train since 33rd Street, as had the woman who was sitting a couple seats away from me. She was reading her book, I read mine.

I think the young couple entered the train at 14th Street. She was a fashion-model type — tall and thin with perfectly toned legs that went all the way to the floor. Wisps of blond hair poked out from beneath her white hoody. Her boyfriend was a muscular-looking guy who might have been a model, too. He was taller than she and his hands were large enough to cup her tiny behind, which he did often while they kissed. She playfully scolded him in her European-accented voice about something he said, calling him a bastard, but the smile on her face showed she wasn't too upset.

I turned back to my book and kept trying to read, but I couldn't help but peek at the girl from time to time — her legs wrapping around his, her hands strolling along his back — as the train swayed on the tracks. Their kisses were loud and sloppy, overcoming the squealing train wheels that echoed in the tunnel.

By the time we arrived in Hoboken, I hadn't finished another page. While I bent over to place the book back in my bag to get ready to depart, the woman sitting next to me said, "I feel like I've been watching a French soap opera. I couldn't help watching. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it."

We both laughed and left the train.

The blond brushed by my bag of bases on her way up the stairs. She turned. "Sorry," she said, smiling.

Chapter 60.2: Hot Girl

I sat next to a hot girl today on the PATH train. Physically hot. As in warm. Yes, she was attractive too, though I didn't see much of her face. (It's not considered polite to stare at a stranger from a distance of about six or seven inches.) As I got on the train -- lucky to catch one of the earlier trains, which are often less crowded and therefore plentiful with open seats -- I noticed the attractive girl and the spaces beside her. Usually, I want an end seat, but I suppose most people do, and they were all filled. My second choice is toward the middle, to give the folks on the end some elbow room. So, I ended up next to the hot girl.

Once the door was closed, I felt her warmth beside me and noticed the lack of warmth on my other side. I opened my book of Donald Barthelme short stories and continued to read "Lightning," which I'd started on the NJ Transit train. It's about a divorced magazine writer who's doing a piece on people who were struck by lightning; it's a tale about falling back in love and how it changes your life. I chuckled to myself often as I read. The next story was called "The Cathechist," which is a conversation between two priests, one of whom goes to the park every day to see a woman. The previous day he'd ended up hearing her confession, but he longs to feel her beside him, as she stands with her hands in the back pockets of her trousers.

There's a nice little section:

"And the lady's husband?"
"He is a psychologist. He works in the limits of sensation. He is attempting to define precisely the two limiting sensations in the sensory continuum, the upper limit and the lower limit. He is often at the lab. He is measuring vanishing points."
"An irony."
"I suppose."

The hot girl with the black and white hi-top boots and the black leather bag that contrasted the whites of her french manicured nails left the PATH at 9th Street. Funny, the train didn't seem much colder once she was gone.

Chapter 56.4: The Mouths of Babes

While I was waiting for the PATH train to embark this morning and braving the cold breeze that came in through the open doors, a mother and a small, crying child walked in. I couldn't see them through the other people standing, but I could hear his blubbering. I could barely make out the words through his crocodile tears. I wasn't sure whether his mother had taken something from him or swatted him -- possibly both. Then some words came through "...broke it." blubber blubber blubber. "You broke my head" ... blubber blubber "...broke my fucking head!"

I chuckled to myself, hoping I'd mis-heard the words. Soon after, the kid stopped crying.

Chapter 54.7: Here Comes the Sun

As I arrived at Hoboken station this morning, the Beatles' Here Comes the Sun began playing over the loudspeaker. Most days there is no music whatsoever on the platform, save the scant whispers coming out of other people's iPods as I pass them.

I don't know why the George Harrison song was in the air, but for the ninety seconds or so that it took me to get from one end of the platform to the PATH trains, I was pleased and amazed and happy.

Chapter 53.3: Bah Humbug!

No, that's too strong, 'cause it is my favorite holiday.

It is beginning to feel a smidgen like Christmas. Perhaps it's the chill in the air or the news that Santa got waylaid somewhere over Denver and had to stop his time bending trip preparations with a layover in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Or maybe it's because I saw a small flake flash before my wandering eyes this morning as I got out of the PATH train station. Maybe it wasn't snow. Maybe it was a piece of windblown crud.

Or maybe it's because I'm about to get my Christmas wish: a couple hours off from work -- well, a few days, actually. But with the travel to see my loved ones and rip open a few presents and toss back a few beers, it'll feel almost like work. Almost. I'll have Tuesday.

No, what I'm looking forward to doing is mapping out a week of winter vacation to do whatever I want to do. At home. Cooking breakfast for my wife after making her late to her office (which is just a room away). Jogging more than 20 miles in a week -- in sunlight. And working on the novel. If I can finish the revisions in a week, it could be the second best vacation of my life -- after the one where I proposed to my wife, of course. At least I'd have an idea of how much work is needed. Then I could use my train commute to sketch out the next book or evaluate literary agents. That's work too, but it's future-focused work.

I'm reading Book Doctor on the train this week, by Esther Cohen. Funny. Some wonderful scenes and playful characters. Not as good as Ward Just's An Unfinished Season, which I finished earlier this week, but it moves along at a comfortable pace. I find myself wishing I knew someone like Arlette Rosen, the lead character in Book Doctor, who devises clever exercises to help writers see their characters and the focus of their books more clearly. I know what I'm writing; making it compelling seems to be my battle.

So I need another vacation. That's what I'm asking Santa for Christmas. Oh yeah, and an iPod.