The Iliad.

I'm five hours into my trip and there's a baby in the seat in front of me that's not screamed for -- maybe -- fifteen minutes of it. I'm suspecting that maybe I'm some kind of bad person for the thoughts I'm having about the baby and its mother.

I mean, I know that babies are babies, and they haven't really developed the skills yet to clearly communicate their needs, so there's gonna be some crying involved, right? More often than not, a lot of it. But come on, who embarks on a ten-hour train trip and doesn't plan for some spastic-baby contingencies? Favorite toys? Some food? Clean diapers?

All this lady seems to be able to do is to rock the baby back and forth, and that's so not doing it.

There's hope -- scant though it is -- that sooner or later, he'll tire himself out and fall asleep. In the meantime, I've got the old iTunes set to "Party Shuffle" with the volume on my little earbuds cranked all the way up.

The whole screaming baby thing is making me think about making suffering an exercise in compassion. I mean, what's to keep me from trying to find a little buried empathy for the suffering of the baby and thedesperation of his mom to not disturb the people around him?

My friend Amy and I had a discussion not long ago in which she left me with the impression that I'd grown harder since moving to New York City. And at first I was a little offended that she might blow into town and see me after a couple of particularly hard weeks, and make that snap judgment. But the truth of the matter is that I think I have grown a little harder and less compassionate since moving to the city. Maybe more than a little.

I was on the subway the other day and was doing that thing where you read over the shoulder of the person sitting next to you? Usually it's the Daily News or the Post -- you know, papers for which no self-respecting liberal would actually pay money, but which still have a
train-wreck kinda appeal for all their outrageous jingoism.

Anyway, my subway neighbor wasn't reading the News or the Post, he was reading The Power of Compassion by The Dali Lama. It proved a nice reminder of my own need to be mindful of others sufferings. And it wouldn't be a terribly big stretch to look at the ten hours trapped on a train with a wailing tiny person as an exercise in patience, compassion, and mindfulness of others' suffering, no?

And by the way: Maybe given my present circumstances, I ought not make jokes about "train wrecks."

I'm just sayin'.

8:30 p.m. Two hours left on the train. My ass hurts. My ass hurts baaaaad.