w i n t e r
blue train
It had snowed the entire week. Drifts became larger and larger with each sunrise and the birds became brighter against the humped white shapes the world had become. Coffee and country ham with red eye gravy got me going those mornings while beers and icy walks home put me to rest.
After a few days there wasn't much to do. Being snowed in is a child's fantasy, but I began to get under projects. Began to get tired of my music...all of it. Began to get cabin fever. Big time.
Begin to wonder if the world would ever go back to the way it was before. An irrational thought I know, but it was in that frame of mind that I went down to the Exchange, feeling lucky to find it open, and sat down to have drinks. And drink I did. But even that grew old by 12:00 and I was wondering what to do next. Always what to do next. It occurred to me that I'd not done any digging around any of my old urban haunts in quite some time and I begin to wonder what they looked like in the this world. The drinking world. The snow covered drinking world.
So I began the walk up Oakland to the tracks. The snow was long gone from the rails and the ballast was ice. There was no moon, it was overcast and sleet had just begun to fall. It bounced off the street, but I heard another, impossible noise. I heard ice on a tin roof. Unmistakable.
Then I saw steam. I saw the faint lights and I saw the cars. Beautiful long silver aluminum cars. Not the new cars that Amtrak uses, but old 50's style cars all coupled together and numbered. Blue plates told me their numbers, front and back of the cars. Curled numbers. Decorative and obsolete. They started at 186 and worked their way down. How far I don't know. I never made it the end.
The cold was doing a pretty good job of sobering me up.
I looked in the windows as I walked by and saw postcards and posters on the walls and damn if I didn't realize then I was walking along side of the circus train. Then I heard the voices, the many foreign voices. I don't know why I did it but I knew I had to get on that train. I simply had to. The opportunity was too great. 1:00am. Surreal landscape. Drunk. I've always had a thing for trains and the circus and here they both were, together, in the middle of this boredom that had been wrestling with my conscious for days. At least that's my justification for what happened next.
I began entering every traincar and knocking on every door, hoping to get someone to talk to me about the circus and this amazing train. I should've been thrown out of the yard on the first car, the Japanese bicycle acrobats. They were all young women and here I was pounding on their door. I heard their chatter on the other side and could make no sense of it no matter how I pleaded. Finally a man showed up on the steps leading into the car, but his English wasn't much better. It was good enough for him to let me know where I was and there were no English speaking people in this car except him and I should try 181. I thanked him and gave a feeble apology before swinging onto the next car down the line. Generator car. Nothing but a narrow hallway and panel after panel warning of high voltage, the risk to life and limb. Behind that, the hum of electricity and the smell of ozone. Then it was out the other side and straight across to the next car.
Here I met the Hungarian. A smoking acrobat. He was wearing a white wife beater and leaning in the doorway of 182. I asked him, but he managed to say very well he spoke no English before just like the Japanese man, mentioned 181 and closed the door.
181 was the pie car. Long past its open hours I wondered what was inside, or what it would be like to cook for the circus or if they had a counter to sit at and all the acrobats would line up and mix with the animal tamers and clowns and everyone was eating sandwiches in costume. And I thought how fun it would be to eat with such a motley bunch.
Next came the Russian. A frail looking young man in a white leotard, who also did not speak English but had mastered the stare. I moved on.
It went this way car after car until I finally had someone answer the door and not turn me away. They were surprised I'd made it that far down the line. They came out and smoked with me. We stamped about in the snow and I learned what it was like to live in 5 X 7 rooms for eleven months out of the year. Yes, I'd found the clowns. Quite unclown like at 1:30am without costume, make-up, or punchline. Just normal guys except they only drank milk.
And we stamped about some more trying to keep warm and struggling with things to say. It seemed we each wanted to know about the others life but only because then, at that moment, we had nothing better to do.
So I went home soon after. I walked the rest of the way through the yard and parted with the train well before it ended, heading down Chapman.
Heading away from the world of color and into the world of white.
goodnight 2.14.00