so after some goofing and joking about it, we stick this ear candle through a paper plate, light it, and I lie down on my left side so we can snuggle the pointed end into my right ear, inches from my mind. one minute goes by, and as I'm watching Home Improvement and other channel-hopping crap, I can actually feel and hear stuff being pulled out of my ear. I'm laying there with a plate on the side of my face and a fire-rod sticking out of my head, and suddenly Dave's mom comes into the room wearing a martian costume made from some silvery fabric, foil, a small inner tube, and a great deal of silver face and spray paint. I didn't see that coming. it was a thorough and great costume, but man. whatever we said to each other, it must have been silly. just as we're making small talk, Dave's sister Jaime arrives with her friend Katie. I could barely see them because of the plate. my ear was starting to get hot. They looked around at us. "Katie's having a little culture shock here, you guys," Jamie said.
in the end, Dave and I both burned a candle in each ear. and our ears felt really good. better than we knew they could feel. now we can hear better. with our new supersonic hearing abilities, we proceeded to the movie theatre to see Royal Tenenbaums (my second time) and an unplanned, unpaid viewing of Black Hawk Down. Not bad for 4.5 hours and 8.5 dollars. Kinda loud, though.
Plotty Trained.
So it's last July and my brother Jeremy and I drive to Braintree and take the red line all the way into Central Square in Cambridge to go to this Luna show. We meet Jonah and Sara and Steve beforehand, and together we all get some sandwiches, smoke a joint in the park, and head to the Middle East downstairs. My mouth dries out, so I'm thirsty. The opening band is this modern indy-psychedelic trio of white guys, They sound pretty cool, mostly. I drink a couple of cups of water from the yellow McDonalds-looking megathermos and go to the bathroom. While waddling in place, watching the openers, my old friend Cory Simpson approaches me through the crowd, and we move to the back of the room, sip water, and talk about the old and new. It's been a few years. I leave to pee, then got some more water. Luna doesn't get started for a while, but they do play a great set, complete with that new sexy chick-bassist.And just as the band steps out to play encores, I glance down at my watch and note that it's 12:30 a.m. Crap. I grab Jeremy, grab one last cup of water, and skedaddle out of the building. We bust into the Central Square T-station just in time to catch the last train heading south towards Braintree. We slump down into the bench seats, congratulate ourselves on our ninja-quick maneuver, and start talking about the show. The train continues on. And just we pull away from Kendall and begin to cross the Charles into Boston proper, I realize that I have to go to the bathroom.
This is no big deal, since I often have to go. Comes with a high metabolism, I always lankily figured. By the time we arrive at Park Street, however, it's not no big deal. I suddenly realize that this is going to be one of those special times. Because I really have to take a piss.
Now Park Street Station serves the green line as well as the red, and every night the final south-bound train has to wait for all of the green line trolleys to show up and dump their passengers. No one can be stranded by the T. So we wait. And Wait. I begin to get antsy. Our car has a notable cast of characters, and the personality really comes out when a middle-aged man runs in, sits down, and begins to sing a sort of soulful, syncopated rendition of Stand By Me. Some people laugh, and two guys get pissed, and one drunk effeminate man complains playfully. People look at magazines.
These were the things happening inside the train. The events unfolding within my bladder and brain, however, comprise a completely different story. Ten minutes after we arrive at Park Street, I come to the conclusion that the Present Situation easily ranks within the top ten worst times I've really had to pee. After twenty minutes, I'm confident that it ranks within the top four. I try to distract myself, shifting my wait around and so on. I have no idea how long the train will sit, so I can't chance running up to the street level to piss in our city's fine Public Gardens. I probably couldn't get back down, anyways, and I definitely can't afford a taci ride. So I sit, then stand, listening to the same guy still singing, and start peeking out through the door to explore other "options". But nothing doing. There's a conductor waiting on the platform, and nowhere to hide.
At 1:15 we start moving again, a full thirty minutes after our arrival. Thirty minutes, dude. The trains stops at Downtown Crossing, at South Station, at Broadway. After Broadway I can't sit down anymore. The pain is unbelievable. Around Adrew station I start thinking nervously about that guy who died of a ruptured bladder while dining at some king's banquet because he did dare rise and leave in the presence of his lordship. His lordship? Who was that guy, anyway? Wasn't he an author? Rasputin or Oscar Wilde or something? I wonder--did he respect, or fear the king? Why can't I stop thinging about this? Now I'm doing the pee-pee dance, waddling around our end of the train, reading and rereading the continuing education, insurance company, and ESL advertisments. Jeremy is trying to be supportive by sitting down and smiling, and I appreciate that, but he really has No Idea. This kind of Def-Con 1 bladder situation is as much psychological torture as it is physical pain, because you must inflict the pain upon yourself by tightening every muscle in your abdomen as hard as you can in the name of societal norms, dry clothing, public health, and your good family name. The crackly louspeaker announces that at Fields Corner those of us not going on toward Ashmont will be bussed to the Braintree station. I groan. I am now seriously considering turning and addressing everyone in the car ("Good morning, everybody. Hey. Look, I'm so sorry about this, but it's an absolute emergency, believe me. I know there's no way you could ever understand, but, well, I really need this right now. It's not you... it's me, as you're about to see.") before I spin around, unzip, and urinate gallons and gallons of my pain all over our end of the train. We rumble past JFK / Umass, and I am unable to think.
After Savin Hill, I try to psych myself up and stay optimistic, but I'm beginning to lose the battle on the mental front. Several of my lobes have united and initiated some kind of override process to take control away from the small minority of synapses that, through steady repetative elecrto-chemical command, is preventing me from wetting myself in an enclosed public space. Once the doors finally do open in Field's corner, I'm delighted. I jump out into the unfamilliar station, glance left, glance right, yell for my brother to hold the bus for chrissakes and begin to sprint-limp to the left, following along an endless brick wall. Once I finally get to the end, I turn the corner with jeans already unbuttoned and, right then and there, begin to unleash 130 seconds of sweet relief down a rather nice-looking flight of concrete stairs. Fortunately, the stairs are vacant, though well lit. The relief is awkward, and not exactly relaxing, but certainly glorious. I'm so worried about missing the train that I bail with still a quarter tank to go. I save that for the Braintree parking garage.
The next morning my pelvic muscles are still tight and sore from the abuse, afraid to let go. God Almighty. It had been the longest train ride of my life. And that, dear friends, is the story of How all T Stations Came to Smell Like Stale Urine.
Actually, discounting that harrowing experience,
the longest train ride i ever took was an overnight number complete with couchette cars. it was when i traveled from amsterdam to zurich to bologna with jonas. or when i traveled from bolonga to paris, to see jonah. or paris to bologna, returning to jonas. it's hard to remember. i rode in a lot of trains during that ten day visit to europe, toting my cd player and a eurail pass. on a train such as these there are often five couchettes. in each couchette you'll find a narrow hallway and several compartments. each compartment contains six bunks. each bunk contains six feet. i have six and a half feet. each foot was too long to sleep comfortably. how many were going through the chunnel to st. ives?there were many americans on the train to paris, most of whom i was afraid to speak with. i stood in the passageway, stared through windows out into the dark streets and tunnels, and smoked dunhill lights in at the tail end of the train. strangely, the door into the next non-existen car or caboose was propped wide open, and i stood close to the doorway and its edies of cold air, watching buildings, lights and railroad ties receed rapidy. i remember falling asleep listening to tortoise and waking up every hour (or 100 kilometres, which ever came first) to the sound of yelping in various romance and germanic languages. in the morning i wrote in my journal, enjoying tea, yogurt and cereal at 7:30 am in the dining car.
You sit in one place, on a giant speeding zipper of a train, staring out the window or busying yourself with a book. you have a destination, a goal that you race toward. and in the process, you just sit back and enjoy yourself. no responsibilities, pursuing a goal without effort. and call me lazy, but I think it's the reason that
I very much enjoy riding trains. Most of the time, particularly when it comes to getting to, from, through and around Boston, I'd much rather take the T or the commuter rail than drive my boat of a car. Red line stations have more energy, musical acts and over-zealous magicians; there, trains move in a straight line and get to where they're going quickly. But the Green line T system has a wonderful semi-efficient, turn-of-the last century aestethic to it. The trolleys rise up from the ground at an angle, brake for stop-light after stop-light, and eventually descend into the earth again. You can usually get to where you're going more quickly by jogging than by taking the Green line, but you can't get the same close-up look at crowds of tired mothers heading home, punk kids swapping drug stories, and sweat-stained cubicle drones glancing anxiously.
Going and Coming.
It was last Monday night, I believe, when I got an extra-special answering machine message from my dear friend Dave: "Hey, Ryan, what's up man. Listen, if we're going to go see that movie, it's gonna have to be after, uh, MY APPENDICITIS SURGERY. Oh, man... give me a call or something. I'm going to the hospital now... call me on my cel phone, and i'll try to check it, or... I don't know. I'll get in touch with you." At good old Jordan Hospital they stuck him in the Pediatrics ward, where his family and I brought him toys and books and joined him for the viewing of quality Fox programming. On the third day, they let him have a milkshake. Now he's back home, healthy with a huge stapled seam in his belly, enjoying video games during his paid medical leave. It's not a bad life, as far as I can tell.What is appendicitis, anyway?
At the dinner table on Thursday, I told my parents that in the very near future I would be driving to California, to live with Joshua and Andrew in L.A. They asked questions, about Why and When and How, and Will your car make it, and Are you really going to drive alone, What do you plan to do once you're out there? And after I brought my empty plate up to the sink, my mother approached me with tears in her eyes and pressed her head against my chest, crying, holding me, making me promise to call every couple of days during my long drive west.
I'd never seen her do anything like that, and I floated out of the kitchen, dazed. Minutes later, up in my room, I was overwhelmed by the same crying, a sympathy and nostalgic uncertainty. All at once I thought about my leaving my mother, about Joshua's recent motorcycle accident and Dave's surgery, about moving on and growing up, beginings and endings, relationships and the finitude of everything. Certain things, simple things, must always change, come and go. I felt neither afraid nor hopeless, really, just packed full of every other emotion. It subsided before long, but for a few minutes there, life--all life--seemed tragic, a barely bittersweet and beautiful tragedy that I knew I had to continue on through.
I wish I could capture and recreate those sorts of complex moments, in any medium.
stepping time, stepping time.
i do not enjoy finding mary poppins / dick vandyke tunes stuck in my head. i do not. i've decided there's not much use for longform when i'm mostly thinking in shorts. and shorts aren't much good these days, here in the east-north-east. ha. ha. it was this past tuesday, i think, that the new year finally rendered my seasonal winter-blue design a semi-accurate representation of life out-of-doors. not much for sledding, to be sure, and the snow melted and re-froze and melted within days, but on the morning when it all fell i awoke at 9:30 a.m. to the keyless tune of my sounding alarm.it was one of those wet snowfalls, where everything sticks to the trees. but the snow had long stopped falling, and it was clear blue-skied with bright sun. my stomach jiggled with some kind of instinctive excitement, but i had no school to miss, no job to skip, and i recognized quickly that there wasn't going to be much sledding action. do i even own a sled? the tummy jiggling remained, however, and for the next hour every time i sat up with a start and slap-snoozed the alarm, i gawked out the window, blinking brightly, to make sure the blanket of snow hadn't started melting away. and i'd fall back into strange enjambed dreams thinking, "aww, man." i love looking down from my bedroom window at untouched bedsheets of snow.
years ago, when we used to get actual snowfall around here, the first outdoor mission of the day was a heartsplit experience. something pure or taoist or artistic inside would grab me with the desire not to violate the smooth blankets with the contaminated texture of my footprints. the snow covered all ground equally, erasing roads, stepping stones, sidewalks and other tracks of progress. at the same time, the urge to be the first kid to tear across the neighborhood and corrupt all of that pure, unpatterned surface was undeniable. that was the urge that always won of course. you can bet i'm not going to let my brother or my friend erik get outside before me. snowdays were hard work.
nothing kicks up the feeling of community in a small new england town like a solid night's snow. all anyone's looking for is that new snowfall, something to be the first to walk across.
