Winter trains part 3

There might have been a sense of community in the broad atrial waiting area of the station, but it was quickly drowned out by the survival instinct that emerged among comfortable people who are slightly alarmed. Lines formed quickly at the handful of fast-food/coffee places and people scarfed pizza with wary eyes trained on their neighbors, eating as a dog does: quickly and too efficiently to relish the alimentation. Sulking overcoated patrons trudged everywhere to and fro or circled shark-like for the remaining seats on the benches. Smart ones read to stave off impending madness, with ever-more erudite reading fodder glimpsed around every corner.

I was reading Tony Judt with two different frowns. Alternately I displayed my public-transit-has-forsaken-me-never-will-I-see-home-again grimace, and then my furrowed-brow-because-Tony-Judt-is-postulating-a-complex-political-idea-in-clear-and-readable-prose-and-I-am-striving-to-understand frown. I have discussed with my significant other that I ought to stop frowning when trying to understand something or flesh out a thought because the expression is frightening at close range. Maybe I'm often puzzled. I do feel the need to manifest what's going on in my head to the world at large. I furrow my rather prominent but nonetheless brow and try to work out a sentence that might express what I'm thinking.

Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i' the middle on's face?

So I went down to my local Barnes and Noble BOOKSELLERS to do a little browsing. I meandered over to the fiction section and made my selection, Jonathan Franzen's latest. I was about to just walk out the door without paying when I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

It was the hand of Toby Keith.

Toby Keith, clear as day. Toby Keith, wearing a Barnes and Noble-branded cowboy hat, was standing right behind me. He pointed to the near end of the store.

His voice rang out clear and true: Cash register's that way, old hoss. Best pay up. And always remember,

Freedom isn't free

Make some new amends

Feeling sorry for yourself is so easy. It's a trap. Displacing responsibility for problems that are yours alone to solve offers false comfort. It's shirking, at its core. We must refuse to engage in it.

To you I'm a symbol or a monument

The pace is what frightens me.

Following people who knew half as much as they should, but twice as much as me at the time.

Acceleration is the best, when you're throwing extra fuel on the engines, and they're throwing the power right back at you, all ankles and thighs flashing, stick your tongue out as fast as you can go.

We went back there and I could remember everything, being nervous, being properly insane in youth, being entirely unready for anything; memories flashed at me through trees and down twisting paths to the river.

'give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments'

You will come to know all this, that Martin Cronin was a good man, not entirely without fault, but meek and honorable. That he could be hard-hearted at times is true, but this is immaterial to the question at hand. That he could often be short-tempered and petulant, none of his intimates would deny, but whom among us is fit to cast these stones at a poor man, departed as he is, and unable to speak on his own behalf? You, who so well know the measure of this man, will not presume to judge him for his acts. As events unfold, all will come to see that the charity dispatched to Cronin was not freely given, and was not without peril, and that his willingness to trust to strangers was to be his undoing.

I put all my books in a box

if i could digress for a moment, and i will, how can you make a biopic about someone who's 26 years old, the facebook guy? he hasn't really lived long enough for us to judge whether his life has had meaning. plus, isn't it still entirely possible that facebook could end up being something of a fad, along the lines of say...myspace? i'm just saying, it's not like he's gandhi, he's a smarmy, opportunistic 26 year-old who happened to have a good idea. why the need to lionize him and analyze his life so much? perhaps i'm jealous because i'm 24 and i haven't invented facebook yet. nope, that's not it. i'm jealous that john updike got a story published in the new yorker when he was 22, but i wouldn't want to be this facebook guy.

[does anybody read these things?]

-allan

"Aren't you a friend of Van Buren Denby?"

I don't like fawning in literature, let's be clear. This is causing a huge rift between myself and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He likes to fawn, in a way that I've seen Hemingway do also. I'm 50 pages into Tender is the Night, and already I'm conceiving a very strong antipathy towards the way Fitzie sentimentalizes a character named, absurdly, 'Dick Diver'. Has there every been anyone in the history of Western civilization named Dick Diver? No. It's a stupid name, unrealistic to the point of distracting me from the story. Fitzgerald is good with the lyric stuff; maybe he should have been a poet. His fascination with every aspect of Dick Diver verges on obsession.

Dick Diver this, Dick Diver that, Dick Diver is the only American man in Paris with repose [apparently this means he doesn't touch his face at restaurants; who cares?], Dick Diver is great at parties, Dick Diver is a fascinating dinner companion but runs away if you try to monopolize his attentions, Rosemary fell in love with Dick Diver the moment she saw him, Dick Diver's children were educated in France, Dick Diver, Dick Diver, etc. etc. (Have I said Dick Diver too much? Let me say it again, Dick Diver. Now you know my pain). Really far more than I need to know about this character at this point in the novel, and an embarrassing amount of affection shown for him by the author. Hasn't he heard of understatement? And did he know that the name of this character would torture me? He seems more than happy to repeat the name again and again, as if he knew it would get under readers' skin. It's starting to feel like work to read this for my book club, which is unfortunate. I'm committed to finishing it, but I wouldn't mind reading something I'd enjoy.

Hot Property!

Thoughts on the weekend ahead:

-73 degrees F ought to be nice. I'll count each of them as a blessing.

-I should try to live in the present a little more, and not think about next weekend on Monday.

-The rain will stop eventually, won't it?

-There are a great many things to live for in the world. Warm spring weekends are one of them, though not the most important one at the moment.

-I'm winking at myself. A private joke.

As time goes by

And never can I remember such happiness about so little. There's happiness everywhere I look. In every corner, in every passing tree sunlit this morning. Another day has come for me to live. There it is for me to grasp and wring life from. I yearn for more life. There is happiness in the little tender sadness that spills over into the edges of my life from pop songs and memories. My life to do with as I please. To go to work each day, to thank my lucky stars, to love people as hard as I can, to log another 40 hour week and never forget that my whole life has been a blessing, a reward beyond reproach that I may never have known until this moment.

goodness gracious

And leave Tiger alone, eh? There's no way this is anyone's business but his. Don't give me that TMZ bullshit.

What happened to people being discreet?

I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less

Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.

It's good advice. And every 'est' word is considered a mistake by spellcheck.

You are what you love

"Clouds Up"