Out-Numbered

Here I am again. On the train. To and fro. Today I'm sitting next to a woman that smells like rice and burnt hair. Fro and to. Two hours a day. I begin to imagine eating a bowl of rice and burnt hair. 5 days a week. Under normal circumstances I would change my seat but she is sitting on a piece of my shirt. Pinned to my seat like a passenger in a car wreck, waiting to be rescued by the jaws of life. 52 weeks a year. Today I'm on one of the older trains. The perpetual smell of shit and bleach fill the air. The two scents  are paradoxical yet destined for each other like Hannah Horvath and Adam Sackler from Girls.  25 years. Which is worse? The smell of shit or the smell of bleach? I want to believe there are more important things to contemplate.  I'm a working man. These are my cash and prizes. Bleach and shit. Rice and burnt hair. I mathimatize. Give or take I've spent about 11,000 hours of my life on the train. "Siri, how ...

Here I sit on the LIRR, knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of me. Usually women sit like this or teenage girls. Business men sit upright, drinking beer and reading the Wall Street Journal.  Doesn't anybody know that the news is forever a day late and a dollar short?  Kids press their noses against the mucky windows and prop their gum laden sneakers on the faux leather.  Some commuters sleep. I don't know why but I've never been able to sleep on the train. Sitting with my knees up is comfortable but only for a few minutes at a time.  I have old knees. Old like Brian Dennehy old, not like George Burns old. So, I shift back and forth, up and down and an inch here and there. Seems like a lot of work but it's a hard habit to break. I love the 5:40 train. Especially during the spring time.  For the most part, the sun is at our back. Sometimes it peers through the windows from the South West, a subtle reminder...

OK. I'm going to be honest here. I had something I wanted to write about but I'm having a hard time concentrating. A few months ago, I started doing most, if not all of my writing on the train. It's the only time, aside from late at night, that I have to myself. For the most part, it's been a pretty decent escape. Sometimes I write in the morning on the way to work. Sometimes I write in the evening on the way home. I usually sit with my tiny computer on my lap and stare at the screen the entire commute. Typing. I'm pretty sure I look like a douchebag and for the record, I don't agree with my spellchecker. Douchebag is one word. I also get really self conscious of my fingers. All the metaphors that have been used to describe the typical NYC morning commute, are pretty accurate. "We're packed like sardines in here." "It's like a herd of cattle." You get the picture. So at any given moment of any given train ride, I'm sitting approxi...