Traveling Man

12:50 PM

Well, I'm with my old friend Amtrak on yet another journey to Pittsburgh. I guess I should be grateful for the work that finds its way to me from Pittsburgh, but one has to wonder why all this work wasn't forthcoming for the year before I left, and why I ever left, if they're gonna keep having me back.

But the truth is that I left because I couldn't live there any more. I was depressed and unhappy, my relationship had ended, and I needed to try to be an actor in New York City. I had, as I like to tell my friends, become a big fish in a small pond and needed to go to the next level and be a microbe in the ocean. Little did I know!

So that's how it happened. Or at least that's the incredibly simplified version of how it happened.

It's weird, taking the train from New York City. Once you get into Penn Station, you're pretty much isolated from the world, and you leave the city racing along the tracks underground until you're well out of Manhattan and into New Jersey. Suddenly you emerge into (if you're lucky) the sunshine and you're awakened to the teeming possibilities of life. Well, that's actually a pretty grandiose way of putting it... you come out of the train tunnel into a swamp, and once you pass beyond Newark, you get to look at some pretty serious industrial blight. But I tend even to see the life in the blight.

* * *

I have to admit that I'm really looking forward to the chance to see all of my friends. I haven't spoken to Patti Kelly in quite a while, and Amy (I'm not sure I told you this) has decided not to stay in New York, but to move back to Pittsburgh and go to school full time. I was looking at a long, lonely summer in New York City, what with Janet & Doug leaving to work at Mountain Playhouse. So the chance to hang out with my Pittsburgh friends is something to which I was looking forward.

So I'm off to do You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. All of my friends think I was born to play this role, and I have to agree with them. At least I think I was born to act this role. It's the singing part that has me really nervous. Everyone insists that I have a fine enough singing voice and that it's not exactly like it's a Sondheim show or something, but I'm still scared. A couple of people have made fun of me for being scared, too. They tell me I should know how good I'm going to be and not worry. But, really, fear isn't exactly the most rational of human experiences, is it? I can know intellectually that I'm going to be fine, and I don't have to be Enrique Caruso, but feeling that is another thing altogether, isn't it?

* * *

4:45 p.m.

About half-way to Pittsburgh. I just got up to go to the restroom, and while there realized that, in my haste to get out of the apartment today, I didn't put on a belt, which means I don't have a belt for the next five weeks. Unless I buy one. Which I'll probably do anyway, since I need to get socks and underwear while I'm in town anyway. But boy, it's a law a physics, at least wherein I'm concerned, that packing is never a completely successful venture.

We're about to pull in to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If I were driving to Pittsburgh, I think I'd still only have about three hours left; but alas, I'm on a train that has to go out of its way and make periodic stops. Riding the train is difficult for me because of my control issues. Not having control of direction and speed and stops is annoying to someone like me. More so than, say, air travel. Sure, I'm giving up control in air travel, but at least I can be reasonable assured that we're going in a straight line and we're getting there pretty damn quickly. In most of my life, I'm really an it's-the-journey-not-the-destination person, but when it comes to travel I want to get there as quickly as possible and relax.

* * *

While we were in Harrisburg we had a ½ hour layover, so I stepped off the train and snapped a few pictures of angles and images that interested me. Harrisburg's train station definitely has an old fashioned feel. I snapped a few pictures then came back and downloaded them. And checked my e-mail. I have to tell you webfriends, the purchase of that cellular fax/modem card is the neatest purchase I've made in quite some time. Anyway, here are a couple of the better photos. This first one is of a lamp post on the train platform. I looked up and the image grabbed me for some reason. I fiddled with the picture in PhotoShop a little, 'cuz the camera's automatic light exposure made it come out too white, so I dimmed the background. The light's really weird in the picture, 'cuz I'm shooting against an overcast sky, but the sun was shining over my shoulder. Interesting, no?

This next one is of the same shot, just framed a little differently. And I've also messed with some of the colors in the photo, pulling up the blues and greens in the highlights, and the magentas in the shadows. I'm discovering that I love playing with these images in PhotoShop. It's a really cool program and I don't think I'll ever completely know how to use all of its features.

I also took two shots of the train along its length from my position, facing in two different directions:

  

Notice how the light is so different in these two shots? Granted, I'm not very good at the whole photography thing - definitely a dilettante - but I'm not thrilled with how little control I have over the shutter speed. That stuff is all automatic. I guess I have to do three things: Take a photography class involving working with real film, look into purchasing a digital camera that gives you control over all that stuff, and, oh, wake the hell up and quit dreaming. Like I have the money for that crap!

* * *

There's not a lot to do on a train when you're determined not to nap so that you'll be able to sleep when you arrive at your destination. So I took some more photos, this time as the train was moving. I was hoping to achieve some sort of blurry-up-close-sharper-in-the-background sort of effect. I failed miserably, of course, but I think the photos are actually still pretty interesting.

So I just have to tell you that I'm amazed and annoyed by the unwashed masses. Well, the washed masses, too, certainly, but most definitely the assorted freakin' masses that are on this train with me. In front of me I've got a fat kid who's playing his hand-held Nintendo with the volume cranked up. Has anyone else noticed how fucking monotonous that music is?!? Across the aisle from me is a lady who's an opera singer, listening to some arias as she follows along on her sheet music. Singing. Not loudly, mind you, but enough to be heard over here. She's competing with the lady behind me, who's singing along to her Jesus music. Unfortunately, she's making no effort to sing in tune or softly. I regret offering to let her share my electrical outlet. To think, if I'd had any foresight back in New York and denied her access to the electricity required to run her CD player, I wouldn't be suffering now through her jarringly-annoying witnessing. No good deed, it seems, goes unpunished.

Several rows ahead of me is an Indian mother and her three- or four-year old son. He's been playing at the top of his lungs since we left New York. Alternately bouncing all over the car as his mother ignored him or crying like a banshee when she thwarts his desires, he's clearly running on an Energizer® battery. He loves taking his mother's Amtrak-issued pillow and throwing it her. Not long ago he saw my pillow sitting on the seat next to me, but wasn't at the right angle to see me. Assuming that anything he wanted was his entitlement by birth, he came charging over here to grab my pillow, and stopped short when he realized I was sitting next to it. He still wanted the pillow, but he seemed to understand intuitively that the look I was giving him meant grave danger. He may grow to be an old man; he wisely chose the path of retreat.

It's been a surprisingly annoying train ride, actually. Very unlike my previous experiences with the train - but then again, upon reflection, I don't think that I've ever traveled on a Saturday before, which I guess would make a difference. Lots of families and small children traveling.

You'd think I'd have a lot more patience for children, wouldn't you, since I do have sixteen nieces and nephews, after all. In my own defense, I have to say that I love children and I realize they're occasionally going to be unruly or uncomfortable or loud or weepy or whatever. I just have no patience for people who let their kids go hog wild in public. Or themselves, for that matter - witness the competing divae.

Man, when did I become such a curmudgeon? I'm just all about bitch-bitch-bitch, ain't I?

Okay, there's just no way to say this without sounding like I'm complaining, and I'm sure on some level I am complaining, but it's still true: My butt hurts from this train ride!