Blog by numbers: Number in the title, call to action

You wished you had done internships.

You're glad you went to college.

Spending all this money.

Sitting on the floor with a copy of 'The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest.'

4 pack of Jello.

Wasn't the best student.

Made his way in the world.

Meta-commentary not welcome.

Hologram Johnny Damon.

You're feisty.

Vegetarianism is not the only answer.

The internet has become commercialized.

A motorist honked at me for cycling.

Matte paint jobs on cars.

PDAs went out in the 90s.

Smart cars are too small.

Wheelock's Latin and accompanying story book.

Winter trains part 1

The coffee came to 1.07. I had the nickel at the ready, expecting 1.04, but the tax had gone up under Democrat control, and I fumbled with two pennies, hastily produced from some pocket.

The coffee's purchase was a thing definitely settled, and in my arrogance I thought it marked me out as a seasoned traveler, beater of chills. With hot liquid input and vigorous walking in the station, I could overcome the dual disadvantage of a pronounced lack of personal insulation and 15 minutes on the platform in sub 10-degree Ipswich already chilling the flesh. This is special cold that can't be rooted out by the heat in most train cars; it is the rare one that can play the role of microwave and re-heat humans who are starting from a refrigerated imbalance, it being hard enough to maintain the warmth of people who enter the cycle at a neutral level. I was unable to get rid of the cold in my feet, which felt like wet soldiers in draft canvas tents at Valley Forge.

The chill is an unwelcome houseguest, insisting on one more glass of wine after an awkward dinner, and then another glass, reveling in others' discomfort. After it is gone, the hollow remnant of its presence lingers. It can't be forced but by bluntness and boldness. Even this, though, requires appropriate conditions.

The coffee was hot and needed but I had rashly chosen the Dunkin Donuts medium over large at the same price from McDonald's. I was already cold again before the last sip. Sidling up to the rail employee in front of the service window, I wait for other harried commuters to ask longsufferingly about their trains, which are as a matter of course delayed so long they aren't worth asking about (assume twenty-five minutes off the top). Trying to play the cool customer, seen-it-all-before commuter rail veteran of a dozen cold Januaries. I smile nonchalantly as I mosey over with my inquiry queued up in the brain-catapult, but stumbling on the destination (usually Haverhill, now Lowell) I ask the question and get the answer everyone else is stuck with; a 5 or 10 minute delay in theory stretches out to around 30 in the real world.

Yet another short post about trains

-I am the pointed sweatshirt hood of the hardscrabble Lynn youth. Slightly starched, and improbably towering, I have become an entity unto myself, shark-like and telling of dozens of seamy dives and two-room tumbledown apartments I have seen, you haven't

-I am the train tunnel into Salem—dimly lit, always nightbound. Too ramshackle for the gleaming cookie-cutter housing complex not 100 yards away

-I am the shining water at Beverly, bright expanse, unfrozen, spared by brackishness. Boats bob, ready for pleasure or lobstering. See the mirror of the sun, with an orange sheen flashing flat across the wavelets

cars as brogues

I surveyed the lot. 5:30 on a Wednesday, there was no doubt that R— would still be lurking in the office. Her car must be amongst the last picked-over remnants in the stew pot parking lot. Which one?

Consider the source. Micromanager, another one of those people who seems to have a work face they put on every morning, giving you the eerie feeling of talking to the face, not the person. There must be a car for her here, one that fits.

I saw it clear, like icy water in a steel sink: the Honda Accord nestled in a corner spot.

Moderate luxury without ostentation.
Modernity without hipness.
Practicality without ugliness.
Comfortably, tenaciously situated right in the middle.

That it was beige went without saying.

I used to live in Pittsburgh, now I live in New York

-What was that sickly sweet smell that flashed through the train car? I narrowed it down to blue cheese, bourbon, or my own sweat fermenting.

-Please notify a crew member if you plan to vomit at any time during today's trip. You will be swiftly dispatched.

-Bernard's bald head and teeth gleamed in the advertisement's photo, and seemed to welcome the inference that earning an MBA in Philadelphia would be safe for a black person.

-Gleaming against the murky dusk, the repair bays stretched efficiently into the middle distance.

ROYAL SONESTA

-Eternities spent in station stops were really only a minute or two, and the train bolted down the line so quickly that it had to slow to keep from reaching the line's terminus too early.

all lined up

I had at least 7 great conversations in the last 5 days.

time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions

The Skype does not make me feel totally at home. Something off-putting about it. It's a hybrid. There's the disconnectedness of not being with the person physically, just like a phone conversation, combined with the responsibility in a personal interaction of maintaining some control over your facial expressions and reacting properly in some way to the other person's comments. It's almost the worst of both worlds. It does sort of alleviate that thing of trying to not talk over someone on a long-distance call where you have to pause and see if the other person's going to speak. It's much easier when you can see if they're going to speak. And of course it's nice to see someone's face whom you haven't seen in a long time. It was lovely just now to see A over the Skype line, precisely to see her reactions to what I was saying, which is exactly why I'm saying I'm opposed, because people can see my reactions. I'm not saying it's not magic, because there is clearly black magic involved in Skype, I'm just saying I'm not totally comfortable with someone else seeing my face during a long-distance conversation. Usually when I'm on the phone I pace back and forth, look in the mirror, generally am not presentable to others, because I know no one can see me. This is different, you feel as though you have to "prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet".

The whole thing brings to mind the part in Infinite Jest where Wallace discusses the invention of video-phone technology and how people eventually decided they didn't want other people seeing them, and created lens caps for their video-phones with tableaus on them meant to deceive the person on the other end of the line. It's interesting how prescient that seems now.

Do I dare to eat a peach?

The car rocking forward and back in the driveway last night.
The cycle screaming through the Esplanade this morning (back on the old racing wheel).
The trope in literature about how mournful a train whistle always sounds.
How nervous he was to see her, even after they had contracted a certain intimacy.
The almost infantile fears people have when others leave; That which is not here now may be gone forever.
How easy it is to talk about trust and how very hard it is to practice it.
If you're a train conductor you can't be embarrassed by the sound of your own voice.
The graffiti read: "Sorry Chris". A farewell.
The look of amused mock-awe and surprise on her face when she is presented with something.