The fastest way to travel home is by plane, the prettiest by train. Bus might be close to train, save for that word....close. Elbow close. Snoring close. Breathing close. Head on shoulder close.
Too many stories on trains. Too many long journeys back. Vacant faces staring past the driver's ear. Highway comes up to meet the gaze but passes straight through.
Anonymity, on trains. More space. The lounge car for drinks or gazying sideways past prairie and hills. A woman wrote a poem once about North Dakota and trees. As we left Fargo, I thought I saw the place.
I travel light. Worry distance and timelines, not suitcases and stuff. If I lose the pull-behind, I have underwear, a toothbrush, and forty dollars in the smaller one. And something to write on. I could be left by that tree in North Dakota, and if I had the carry-on could last for awhile.
Leaving California by train. Transients under railroad tressles. Lost souls leaning again a wall. And a yellow chair in the middle of a field with a lamp like the one my mother had sitting next to the chair.
We gave that lamp to Goodwill after she died. I'd like to think it made it's way to California to a field the way John Lennon made his way to strawberries.
I choose to ride in the passenger car this time. Not because I think they're kind to my back. And I sleep sparsely, restlessly, in these chairs. Airplanes, too. The pest next to you who doesn't sit still, until she orders wine and digs out the Tylenol PM.
I ride out of California knowing I will be back. We ascend into mountains fraught with heavy snow. Causeways take water down to my apartment on the hill overlooking the bay. I sit on that hill when I can't go home and think of things randomly. My children. Irksome living arrangements. A cat lost at the beginning.
Observer, always. Someone once said I should have a disclaimer pinned to my sweater warning passers-by of my penchant for gleaning their story. Like a farmer combining grain. Like a penny-wise thrifty searching the grass. I like your stories. Please share.
Montana we ease into. It's getting dark. Mountains are there but blurred and stalwart. By morning we'll be easing out of the more mundane western part of Montana into North Dakkota. Mundane is not a word I like to use, but there is a need for contrast here.
Watch the landscape blur. Watch the woman in front of me pilfer through their never ending food suitcase. In the morning she will ask me if I want a sweet roll, maybe, or a hunk of cheese.
Not sleeping and remember the Tylenol PM. A woman gets on on the west side of town. Pretty city. She does not look back. She does look around the train where sleepers are sprawled across seats. I move my bag and she sits down.
