I'm a Fool to Love You.

Tonight is Halloween and I am not doing anything for Halloween because I have blocked off this whole weekend for getting stuff done because I am headed off to a brother’s wedding next week. Yes, The Texan Diplomat is getting married and so I get to do some fun traveling, but that means I have a metric fuck-load of things to get done before I get on a train Wednesday night.

So I am sitting here at my kitchen table doing my work and I have the windows open - it is a nice chill breezy and drizzly dark night - and I can hear the occasional hoots and woots and hollers of Halloween parties in the apartment complex. Longtime readers of this  blog know that I have great difficulty processing the fact that anyone anywhere ever might possibly be having fun without me, so tonight feels a bit lonelier than most. I spend alot of time alone - being both a writer and a grad student - and I’m fine with it and I have actually learned how to be somewhat graceful about this whole being-single thing, but tonight my Pandora is on a bluesy bender and so as I write this I am listening to to Donald Byrd’s “I’m a Fool to Want You” as college girl laughs roll in through my windows on air a little thicker and wetter than most nights and it makes me a little lonelier than most nights.


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Long Slow Ride.

Last week I got to take a nice long train trip. I love the train! For some reason I have very much romanticized train travel. I like that it takes a really, really long time to get anywhere. I like that you get to watch unfamiliar landscapes roll by. I like getting to pass through towns I’ve never been to, I like seeing the people on the streets and waiting in their cars. I like waving to strangers at railroad crossings. I like the tight, narrow stairways that make me feel like I’m descending into a submarine. I like that there is something lonely about trail travel. I like - oddly - the feeling of stillness that it creates in me. That is oxymoronic, I know, but I think that it is due to the fact that even though one is in motion the whole time, one is also confined to that very narrow train car; there is nowhere to go, there is very little to do, and as long as you can prevent yourself from wasting that time playing games on your phone, then there is great potential to relax, to look out the window, and to just simply relax, to let your mind unfurl and to wonder at the world.

Those are some of the reasons that I like the train.

I went from Burbank up to San Jose, which was something like a ten hour ride. Here are some of the - admittedly terrible - pictures that I took along the way.

The lower portion of my body, awesome Chucks, and a Kindle.

The train as it makes a long, slow turn.

You have to look really close, but this is a picture of some Amish people who were on my train. I’m not sure if Amish people are supposed to use the train. I would have asked them, but I thought that creepily taking pictures of them would be more fun.

It is always 5 o’clock somewhere (on the train, usually wherever I’m sitting).

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