general Something I wrote a year and a half ago

Posted March 12, 2006 • Comments Off on Something I wrote a year and a half ago

Now, by way of explanation:

One of my least favorite things in the world is riding home on the train in the fall, winter, and early spring, basically Standard Time, when it’s dusk or still light when I enter the Metro system and full dark when the train emerges from the tunnel in Arlington. I hate feeling like the day is over and I’ve missed it. There is so much more energy and hope when it’s still light out when the train comes out of the tunnel. Often I wish I rode the Blue Line instead, where it comes above ground repeatedly and much earlier.

Then, October 19, 2004:

I’m on my way home, and it’s dark.
Usually I attribute this to my having worked too long, but really it’s just the fault of the approaching winter.
It’s raining, light but steady, and the road is wet. The cars leave tracks behind them, and the big trucks send up clouds of mist after their tires. The streetlights shine across the highway, and you can’t see the stripes between the lanes at all.
I’m on the train. I have a headache, hot, behind my eyes, so I’ve taken my glasses off. I’m leaning my head against the window, hoping that will be cool and soothing. Of course the windows on the trains are plastic, not glass, so they aren’t that cool, and the ride is sort of rough, so my head strikes the window over and over again, light but steady, and it’s not helping.
I lean my head against the window anyway. I lean there and sing Leonard Cohen songs to myself.
I’m trying to sing “Suzanne,” but I keep lapsing into the tune, and the words, of “Famous Blue Raincoat” instead.
Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
This is probably because, unlike “Suzanne,” “Famous Blue Raincoat” actually has a tune. I try, but I keep lapsing.
Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by and you can spend the night beside her
And just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer

The last time I saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder