Today I write to you from a speeding train. I am New York-bound yet again.
I sit in the obviously-decades-old leather bound seats of a Boston-bound commuter rail train. I munch quietly on my pack o' snacks while I gaze out the window periodically. At the Ayer station, I see two overheated hunks walking around the downtown shops without their shirts on. At the Shirley stop, I watch as Jesse, a Hispanic gentleman with a tattoo reading "Jelissa" in elegant cursive on his neck, who got onto the train at the same stop as me and was apparently unaware of the trains arrival time, meanders off the train, lights up a cigarette and marches off to his own destination.
More interesting is what I see in between stops. Have you ever noticed, while a passenger in a moving vehicle, how the trees along the side of the road seem to spin in and out of your perspective? It's as if the whole rest of the world was orbiting around some distant point, and the edge of this orbit reached just outside the window of whatever you were riding in at the time. The big trees dance by the window as if they're on their own personal tilt-a-whirl. The small ones wear their dresses in pretty colors, and they want to spin around so you can see every inch of their dazzling display.
The train slows as we halt jerkily into Littleton 495 station. In the arms of his mother, perched upon a post, a small child with chocolate ice cream dribbled down his otherwise clean yellow shirt waves goodbye to his Daddy with one hand, and clutches a stick in the other; this is a keepsake from some brilliant imaginative adventure he was going on. We're off again and the conductor walks through the door at the front of the car. He snaps his gum and eases through the aisle, taking tickets and jovially greeting the riders.
I gaze out the window again. We pass a farmstand. An elderly woman is standing on top of a rock with her iPhone in its pink silicone case. Believe me, I appreciate the juxtaposition. She is taking a picture of me as I speed by her in the big purple train. I glance at her for the brief seconds she is within my field of vision, and then I go back to the dancing, spinning trees. I guess the trees and I are both on a journey.
Bon voyage, les arbres. Et bon été.
