Aug. 21, 2003 - 5:33 p.m.
Dear Meghan:
Yes, I can relate to the falling-in-love-with-a-stranger-while-in-transit phenomenon. It is this disorder, er, trait that I eventually morphed into a make-up-a-history-of-a-stranger-while-in-transit syndrome. Years ago, when I lived in a town called Oak Park (where everyone knows but will tell you anyway that Frank Lloyd Wright was born there), I would always find someone on the train to fall in love with en route wherever I was going. My methodology, once catching them in my sights, was to position myself next to a window, in which I could make out my target’s reflection at such an angle that I could ogle for whole trip and remain anonymous (well, more anonymous, anyway). It was always better when the train went underground, as the reflection would be crystal clear and not marred by, say, someone who might be my line of vision on the outside of the train.
Eventually, this began to not only weird me out (I am not an accomplished stalker nor peeping tom) but also infect my social interactions. Call it guilt, call it shame, call it something with a more clever name… in any event, I rarely employ commuter love anymore. I do, however, find I can actually zip into REM sleep for an entire 40 minute commute and wake up moments before my stop. File that under Useless Skill.
A side note about the trains in our fair city: they are all colors. In other words, the whole elevated train transit system is made up of the Brown Line, Blue Line, Red Line, Orange Line, Yellow Line, Green Line and Purple Line. This delineation was established less than 20 years ago, and I still have an echo of a thought which was my first reaction: “What does this do to those who are color blind? Do they look for a particular shade of grey on the front of trains to determine that train’s destination?” If it was up to me, the system would be based on body parts.
I always mean to have my portable CD player with me when I ride the train, but I can never coordinate either bringing the damn thing or doing the headphone/volume/listening choice tasks that one would have to accomplish once on board [side note: “task” has become the latest WORD to say at the law firm, so it crops up a lot in my own vernacular]. I even went so far as to make myself a nice little ‘mix tape’, although it is neither a mix nor a tape. On a random Saturday, I made a disc comprising tracks from where-are-they-now acts like Britney Spears, Kate Bush and Peter Townshend to who-were-they-ever acts like Dar Williams and Titiaya. It’s a wonderful collection, the type that I’d like to make wonderful copies of for every one of my wonderful friends. Sadly, I have been on the receiving end of wonderful personal collections like this and I have always determined that they should have stayed ‘personal.’ And, I must ask myself, who’d really want to get into a disc where one could find the lyrics “mix it up and make it nice / custard once and custard twice / talking chrome and whispering steel / escargot and lemon peel”?
Rehearsals for Suspicious Clowns’ fifth show continues with a nice lack of drama. No actors in a fetal position sucking their thumbs. No actors quitting out of the blue. No actors writing me to tell me how wretched I’m doing. We just brought in a seventh actor – a young woman called Kelly – to pick up some of the supporting roles. She’s a stunner, as they say in the old country, and she read wonderfully at her first rehearsal (that was Tuesday). A particularly funny moment happened early on, when we all sat in a circle (in chairs – I’m not that yoga-centric to sit without a chair!), I asked her if she had any questions before we commenced reading. She said, in effect, “what is the theme of the show?” Arthur responded, without losing a beat, “Christ.” We all took hands and I asked Cynthia to lead us in prayer before the joke revealed itself. But her face, Meghan, was priceless… somewhere between “I can do this” and “what the hell is this”.
Looking back at this letter, I must be feeling a little insipid in terms of language. There’s a lot of connected-words-in-search-of-an-adjective things, aren’t there? Better close for now before I make myself appear too unable-to-write-without-this-particularly-lazy-method.
Yours-truly,
Vin-cent
what they said - what they will say
