The next time I whine-think Ehhhn, I don’ wanna take the train the gym and I don’ wanna sit on a stationary bike at the gym and It’s really not that cold out and I’ll just bundle up when I ride. . .
. . . I will remember this 30s-degree-gusty-winds day, with my dead-cold toes and quivering thighs and pissed-off tits and I will grab my fuckin’ MetroCard and a book for the bike and take the goddamned train to the gym.
1. Sometimes free cost too much.
Exhibit A: Under My Skin preview. Boy o boy o boy. The actors were. . . fine, given the script, but that script? Holy hell.
2. I’d stopped bitching about Bones because I’d given up expecting anything better than it had become. I still watched it, though, out of some, lingering, interest.
No more. It’s sliding down, losing whatever bits of charm it had retained. When Fox decides to lay those tired bones down I’ll probably watch the finale, but between now and that day in 2025, I’m out.
3. Oh thou fookin’ Zeus! DO NOT CUT YOUR NAILS ON THE TRAIN! In which of the multiverses is it OKAY TO CUT YOUR NAILS ON THE TRAIN?
None of them! That’s how many: NONE OF THEM!
4. To end on a good note: I finally got out my bike to ride to the gym yesterday.
Last year, I rode all winter, but this year the snow gave me the excuse I needed not to bundle up against the cold.
I’d been biking at the gym—(ma-)lingering health issues have kept me off the treadmill—but I’d much rather peddle my way somewhere than nowhere.
And look, I even refrained from using the requisite Talking Heads lyric. . . .
I catch the last car through the grate. Shit.
But it’s not mine, not whisking by the platform, tho’ it’s headed, like me, deeper into Brooklyn. I puzzle over this as I swipe my card and push through the bars to stand and wait.
Hoyt: the train I missed I didn’t, a 4 moseying through on the express track, just not express.
The next 2 train will arrive in. . . 19 minutes. I look up, and the sign says, 2 12 minutes.
Huh? Oh yeah, just cycling through. No 3 train this weekend. Not that I care: the 2 is mine.
I pull out my The Beautiful Struggle and consider leaning against the ceramic pillar while I read, but decide my naked arm is too clean, and I adjust my gym bag and widen my feet instead, hips pushed forward.
Sound down the line, and I peer into the tunnel. The light’s not right: another 4 taking its time rumbling through. I go back to my book, then look up, and see a small girl with her hands cupped around her eyes, spying on Hoyt, spying on me. Her grin is shy, and then, just before she disappears, an even shyer wave.
I watch the people in the rest of the cars. A small boy bouncing in the window, laughing. Two middle-aged men, sitting tight. A woman reading. Another woman reading. A man leaning against the rails, snoozing. The middle conductor glancing at me, his face, blank.
Two more 4 trains amble by while I wait, and I let my book go slack for both of them, staring through the dim of the middle tracks and into the lighted cars. The woman fixing her hair. The young man turned sideways, toward his girl. More books read by more women. A man signing to two people whose backs I can only see. A man in a kipa half-turned, gazing ahead. A young woman in Heidi braids, dozing. The last car, always someone leaning his or her head against whatever will hold it up, dozing. The last car, the conductor’s berth always empty, until the return.
Most of these faces are black, some brown, a few Chinese (do I know they’re Chinese? I do not.). Even fewer are almost as white as me.
I’m still damp from my workout, still damp from my shower, and damp in the long quiet of the station.
The 2 rolls in, the door opens right where I stand. I step through, and head for home.
The window was full of words.
I looked up from my magazine and saw the cascade on the tunnel walls.
The tunnels are usually dark; there’s no point in looking. But the line is under construction, so banks of lights were strung along the length of this run, illuminating the hidden markings.
It was too much. The walls were pages, filled with painted words, page after page after page.
We were on an underground ship, charting its own course: The slow sway of the train as it crept along the tracks, horn blowing ahead to warn the workers, and the lights—oh! the lights! constant and warm and bowing toward us, beckoning us through this secret passageway—did anyone else notice this?
What were those words? Yes, we all know that someone has been here, before. But still, all those words? What had happened, before?
AbsurdBeats 