3 posts tagged “trains”
Black guy with long braids and shades gets on the Metrorail Green Line train to Greenbelt yesterday at around 3:30. Appears to have a need to show off to the entire car full of passengers, his voice at a feverish pitch, quick and sharp, staccato, cutting through my reverie and my futile attempts to enjoy a leisurely read through my current book.
"Who needs a wife? Fuck a wife! I'm a bachelor for life! I'm a bachelor for life! (10 times over until I thought he'd never stop)."
Okay, okay, we get the point, I think.
And then, "I'm the reason you threw away our dildo..."
I wondered if this string of rhyme was a creation of his own or a song he had piping through the headphones.
I guess he tired of ranting or got off the train.
There was a sudden lightening of the mood.
When he was there, it was like everything else around me stopped as people shifted uncomfortably, sat out the interminable end of his tirade or glanced knowingly at one another, most of them annoyed and wanting silence or space for conversation.
I have nothing against rap or hip-hop. I used to listen to groups like Naughty By Nature all the time, over a decade ago before my musical tastes hit one of many areas of metamorphosis in my life. I'm not even offended by curse words, hardly notice them. Heck, I say them myself, a bit more than I should. But what seemed to bother me was that his voice, the vibrations, this negativity in the air, was almost palpable, as if it took charge of the air around me, the space in which I enjoyed a brief respite. His vocality took that away from me, shook me to the core.
I'm all for freedom of speech and diversity, but when you are squeezed together and having to coexist with others in a speeding tin can, an onslaught of words such as this seems to be suffocating, and the situation calls for some understanding of noise pollution.
Of course, I know it also calls for me, the newcomer, to develop more of that thick urbanite skin, that ability to shrug off what's antagonistic and be more aloof, unconcerned and just accept the way of my new life.
One person's art is another person's villainous verbosity.
Jen
Bleep -- bleep -- bleep!
The sounds of a video game in full swing cut through the background sounds of the morning commute from inside a Metrorail train car. I turn my head to see the kid glued to it and muse how the thoughtful touch of a button to considerately turn down or mute the volume is the furthest thing from his hard-wired brain. He is oblivious to anything but the digital connection he has to this machine.
Behind me, a man mumbles something about it to the neighbor in his seat, to the effect of not having had gadgets like that when he was a kid. The man beside him pipes up and agrees. They exchange ages in relation to this, and they spiral backward into a reverie about "party lines." Not the kind of party lines you'd expect to hear as a topic of conversation between two men in the District, I think, smiling, as I eavesdrop surreptitiously on this odd bit of conversation.
The two, who were strangers (as far as I can tell) before this incessant noise brought them to a common ground, reminisce about a time that this type of telephone system connected people within local areas, using different rings to designate calls for each separate household. We modern types who hardly pee without having a cell phone clipped to our belts -- and the few of us who even dare to navigate traffic while simultaneously texting from these mega-multi-function phones (not that I'll admit to anything) -- would have a hard time contending with this archaic system, I think. It is only effective if one party is not constantly tying up the line to the disadvantage of other users. That was during a time when people did not live and die by the phone and the constant availability of communications. Things were not so global, I guess, so they had only to walk down the street to gossip with a friend.
It's hard to fathom now that Alexander Graham Bell once had quite a few doubters as to the eventual success of his invention. Oh, if he could see us now racing about like scurrying rats, data fed to us from every possible source, virtually controlled by this flow of information at times, our world shaped on so many levels by advertising and the news media. I mean do we really ever know what we really think and feel about anything anymore? Can we honestly, 100 percent say that what we speak of and support comes from our own volition and not because of the programming we receive from hearing something over and over on television?
So moments like this morning's idle chat between two commuters are the ones I treasure - the rarity of a human conversation erupting in such an unexpected time and place as during the hubbub of the public transit commute, when an unspoken code seems to dissuade talking.
So call me nosy, because I am.
These moments, no matter how abbreviated, as a whole, over time, give me better insight into this urban culture. I liken myself to a sociologist of sorts, a spectator who is entertained by being a fly on the wall and trying to gain insight into the lives of others. I hope this will help me to develop my craft as a writer. No subject is more interesting to me than people, the stories of our lives, and why we behave the way we do. This world, our society, is a vast frontier that will never be fully and completely explored and will always invite my curiosity.
That's where the meaning of life is to be found. Not in looking down from the ivory tower of corporate offices or pushing people out of the way to get to the top, but in the simple in-betweens -- moments such as this when commonalities arise and spark words between two unaffiliated people; stooping down to pick up something someone dropped, catching up to him and getting a smile in return.
Nah, you would never guess that I'm an idealist, would you? Not in a million years.
Here's a Wikipedia article on party lines, for more info.
