I've Been Handwriting Again

I know what you're all waiting to hear about.... but you'll have to wait.

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I'm sitting in Penn Station, waiting to catch a train to Pittsburgh. A measure of how much I love Doug Rees that I would go back to this place without being paid for acting!

Okay, so that's a little bit of hyperbole.

I was supposed to leave on the 7 a.m. train yesterday morning, but I was delayed by a little trouble New York City was having... you may have heard of it [cue cheesy network theme music] The Blackout of '03.

I suspect that this is going to be one of my long, rambling train entires - but then again this is the first train trip I've taken without a laptop computer, too, so it will depend on how easy it is to write on a moving train. I'm pretty finicky about writing under conditions that make my already-scraggy printing look even worse.

(On the train now, and I suspect that this is going to be a pointless excercise... these train rides are rougher than they apear [Note: I really wish you could see the handwriting on this last bit... it's hilarious])

Yeah, I'm not going to be able to write on this trip - troublesome, 'cuz my story of the great blackout is a good one that I'll have to record some other time. Rest assured, though, that I got pictures.

I'll write where I can as we stop along the way. It's a bit of a bummer, though - 'cuz on a trip like this there's not much to do but think, and so many things trigger thoughts I'd like to be able to record in transit. I really miss having a laptop at times like this.

As we were crossing New Jersey, the sun's rays were slanting obliquely from behind a cloud bank and it made me a little melacholy... those sorts of things invariably remind me of my brother's funeral. It's weird, because I nkow how subjective memory is, and I often wonder if the images I retain from that day - the break in the snow, the sun's rays spilling over the lip of a cloud bank, my mom's mournful banshee wail as we were led away from the gravesite - are all real or whether they're constructions my mind has made to comfort me. I guess I'll never know that, but there's no disputing - as any decent actor knows - memory is a powerful force, regarless of its legitimacy.

We just stopped and picked up an extended family of Amish folks [I'm only guessing they're Amish - for all I know they could be Mennonites... don't a bunch of them live in Pennsylvania too?]. The children are, frankly, adorable. They're all dressed like little replicas of the adults, right down to the suspenders and hats.

And man, let me tell you, Amish folks have a scent all their own, baby! It's difficult to separate my elightened ideals, which would argue that not only are they entitled to reject modern conveniences but that I should just damn well get used to the idea that people of different cultures aren't necessarily gonna be like me, and the assualt that's taking place on my nose right now.

Don't get me wrong. I'll be the first to argue that there's an appeal in natural human odors and all, but not when ten people who culturally eschew deodorant step off a sweltering platform and onto an enclosed train car.

I'm just saying, is all. Does that make me bad?