On the autumn-colored PATH train, I admire a trio of wonderfully-dressed French tourists, cameras and messenger bags slung around casual shoulders and thick black scarves wrapped around chilly necks. All three own brilliantly long and messy hair. The two men keep disheveled beards. Their eyes sparkle with the excitement of the unfamiliar. Watching them, I think of my sweetheart and me, under some foreign ground, stuffing colorful bills into a slow and stubborn slot, attempting to board the Metro. And where would we go?
It's funny how a morning's commute to work is always so full of reminders of its opposite, visions of a different life, a train taken someplace else. And I apologize for again writing away from audio; I have not made the time. I could, of course, make the time, but it might be at the expense of happiness and some sanity. It's a surprise that I even have time for this; often I feel I do not. And funny to think that, if I wasn't doing this, I might be listening to the hi-fi. We do
something or the other and hope that it all lines up, balances out, or even becomes just one thing, and often enough, we must at least believe, it does. But why? Maybe thinking this way is wrong. I've spent these six years attempting to move closer, boxing up my belongings and transferring from one shell to another. And when the job moved away, I moved closer still. And still. And still, it seems too far. Wouldn't it make more sense to completely move in? We certainly have the space for it now. If only I could make a place for my sweetheart and me, where all things and all time fell to our hands like colorful leaves. I want to need nothing. I want to want nothing. The closer the better. I would certainly save on the commute, and maybe Primedia would cut me a break on rent.
I look down towards the end of the tunnel as if I'm looking straight into the future, only I know where this particular tunnel leads: 33rd Street. I wonder if I'm another American writer hoping to somehow imagine myself into a world outside of my own, outside of myself, home to more than the luxury of existential concerns. And I flatter myself to even wonder. Or do I? The latest Design Within Reach catalog winks an eye from the darkness of my tote bag. Inside, it's a complete killer, filled with lady chairs and fortune lamps and other things I'd love to own. Its cover, however, holds a red
Music Hall MMF 2.1 turntable. Or is it a
Pro-Ject Debut III? I could never tell the difference. A couple of my French friends depart at Christopher Street, leaving their third to lean against a wall and plug himself into an iPod.
