Finally, same car, same time, not by design

Last night, it finally happened: I got on the train at Kendall, looked around (yay for paying attention!), and saw D. sitting next to the doors at the other end of the car. He was wearing his green cap, reading the Lynda Barry book he’d borrowed from me, engrossed. Did not see me at all. Those minutes between Kendall and Central were probably some of the most exciting I’ve spent on the T yet, knowing we were there on the same car, figuring out how I was going to get over to him (try to push through the crowd in-car, or step out of the car & hope to get into a good spot upon boarding again?), delighting in the big-city-becomes-small moment. At Central, I ducked out of the car, walked fast over to the other door, let two dudes with heavy boxes get on before me, and then maneuvered my way to a spot right in front of D. & said hello. So great! I had to get off at Harvard, so we had a short conversation, just enough time to marvel at the occurrence, check in about our days, make plans for meeting up later.

This morning, we were back on the Red Line, running late (always running late), D. got drawn into an article in the paper while I wasted time on the comics & scanned what I could before it was time to get off at Kendall again.

Bruce, big news

Listened to Ed Norton interview Bruce Springsteen, heard an excerpt of Springsteen’s version of “Because the Night,” thought it was too bad you weren’t there on the train with me because we could’ve made out right there, right then. I was feeling that good.

Missed a call from my brother, but got his voicemail after getting off the train, called back & got some good, happy news. What a day, already!

Running late

We left the house at 7:28 or 7:30, buttered toast in hand, ate & talked as we walked. Last night, my insulin pump tubing leaked for a few hours before I caught it, so I spent most of the evening feeling crummy & anxious, and it took hours for my system to get back to its equilibrium point (that happened somewhere between 2 and 7am). I’d wrapped my toast in aluminum foil, thinking I’d wait and eat it on the bus, but it had been so long since I’d been able to eat anything, and D. was eating his & it smelled good, and it felt like a good time for immediate gratification. I’m tired and hungry, I said, and took some substantial bites. The rest was our usual: not running to catch the arriving train, each taking a section of the paper, quick reading, goodbye kiss. And I made the bus with 3 minutes to spare.

Voting

Walked up Park St., up Somerville Ave. to my polling place (the fire station), arrived to find a line out the door at 7:03 a.m. But it was a good kind of line, full of several senior-citizen earlybirds who also happened to be pals with poll workers, so there was much exchanging of pleasantries among neighbors & joking around. I was a little envious of the folks with friends, and was imagining how long it would be before I had some polling-place neighbor-friends of my own. But then, moments later, I stepped out of the station & saw a friend & band-mate of D.’s. She was standing on the corner, holding a sign urging voters to mark No-No-No on their ballots. I made a joke about having voted right, and she had a moment of concern that maybe I’d just guessed, or had been uncertain when I fed my ballot into the scanning-machine, but I reassured her that I knew what I was doing all along.

I made it to the bus stop with 20 minutes to spare, more than enough time to get a doughnut and wait in the cold and wonder at how worried I’d been about not making it in time.

Noting

Yesterday it was the color in the trees on campus, the fact that if I stopped to look, I could see trees all around the pond & the meadow, some green, some burnt orange, some brilliant crimson, some creamy yellow. When you work at one of the most beautiful campuses in the world, it’s a good idea to remember to look up.

Today it was D.’s new haircut, the way the stripes on his vest matched the plaid of his shirt almost exactly, the unusually warm weather (65F), that it had rained earlier, the strangely heavy traffic at the intersection of Beacon and Park, the mummy on the porch of the only house decorated for Halloween along the way, the fact of my nearly-incessant smiling at such an early hour.

Extended, glorious

Fall day for real, sunny but cold enough to warrant a hat or a hood. D. & I walked from his house to Davis, stopping along the way to look through two boxes of free t-shirts & books on the sidewalk. I scored a Somerville is For L<3vers shirt, D. found one for a campus organization for African, Latino, Asian, Native American students: ALANA Support Services. Both of those slogan-sentiments funny & true. On the T, we shared the paper & D. saw a friend across the car, went over and chatted with her for a few minutes, then came back over to say goodbye before I got off at Harvard. Met a colleague, talked Zotero and supporting student research in interdisciplinary programs, drank some coffee, and left in time to make the 10 a.m. bus to campus. Felt pretty motion-sick throughout that ride, so I tried to focus on all the things leading up to it, all so good.

Almost no memory

Yesterday morning, the train stopped before we got to Newton, and we were there on the tracks for awhile before we learned the reason why: an injury, which we later learned was a fatality. We adopted the language the conductor and train staff used, in our phone calls and text messages, struck and fatality, not killed, not suicide. On the way back into Boston last night, we rode on those same tracks, but no one (at least no one official, and no passengers publicly) acknowledged what had happened, which felt sad and strange and it was hard not to think about the grotesque erasure happening with each passing train. Even stranger this morning, when we (the regulars, most of the same staff) were all back on that same train, still no one noting or acknowledging, and nothing in the paper, which D. tells me is what happens when it’s a suicide and not an accident caused-otherwise. Anyway, I’m remembering.

After a month back on the bus (mostly)

This feels, seriously, like the first day since school started when I’ve had the time & mental space to type out thoughts I’m having about my commute. September means the bus between Cambridge & the College is back, and I’ve been taking it most days, both ways. Not sure that I’m really saving much money doing it this way (since I still have t take the train every Tuesday, and sometimes on Wednesday or Friday mornings), and I far prefer the train, so I’m going to be thinking hard about what I want to do for October. Bus advantages: sleeping in til 6:45 am, getting to walk out the door of the library & board the bus right at 5 (instead of waiting for a 5:25 train, in all weather conditions), getting home slightly earlier, naps. Also better for meeting up with folks after work, if they’re in Cambridge/Somerville. Bus disadvantages: the somewhat-unavoidable overhearing of fellow passengers’ conversations, not being able to read, not having a place to stop for coffee along the way, occasional bouts of motion sickness.

I’ve also been not-taking-for-granted the mornings & commutes I spend with D. I’m finding that I enjoy & look forward to the waking up & traveling together as much as I enjoy the dates that get us to that point. So nice when the trip to work involves the kind of smiley-, sparkly-mood-action that good company, a real breakfast, & coffee make possible.

Pretty much perfect.

New walk from D.’s new house takes about 5 minutes more than the old one, at least that’s my guess, since I wasn’t paying too much attention to time. There were other, better things to keep in mind, like the wind & the feeling of an impending change in the weather & the gradual incline/decline of College Ave. D. bought a paper, gently placed the Sports section on top of the newspaper-recycling stand, and offered me the choice of News or Metro. I took news, scanned the front page, then dug in & read about the rescue of two goats perched perilously on a bridge in Montana, about yesterday’s oil rig explosion, the removal of the temporary cap from the BP oil well, and a contested NATO airstrike in Afghanistan. I watched D. fold & unfold his paper, tried to manage mine as neatly (need to practice). There was some hand-holding between folding-moments, some looking out the windows as the train crossed the bridge we walked last night, some goodbye-kissing on the Downtown Crossing platform. Mostly I just felt really happy.

All smiles

This is how I know I have a good job: spent part of the walk home last night telling D. what I was most looking forward to about work today, then had some more enthusiastic-work-talk on our walk to the T. What did the two conversations have in common? Starting my day off with E., for sure.

Particularly smiley morning, too: exchanged some goodbye-smiles on the outbound platform, then smiles in line at the coffee shop, and a couple more on the walk to campus, and some to myself, thanks to a couple of songs that have been on infomusical-device repeat for the past few weeks.