Grey's Journal:
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Slowly, carefully, quietly -- for I knew I would be in trouble -- I dressed and went to the front door of our flat. I turned the lock, stepped outside, held my breath, and closed the door. The lock didn't get to the `k' in click! before I heard Zornitsa yell ``Where are you going, Grey!?'' and I ran down the stairs and out the door. Zornitsa caught up with me at the station while I was buying my travel card and alerted me to her presence by punching me on the arm. There was fire in her eyes. ``Why didn't you wait for me!?'' ``You know I don't like to wait until the list minute,'' I pleaded. She looked at the clock. ``It is now 8:26. Your train is at 8:31. It is not the last minute. I'm mad at you now.'' She didn't speak to me for five days. I've since learned it is my daily duty to escort her to the station. Now, every morning I watch from the opposing platform as she walks down the stairs just as her train pulls into the station. For her, waiting on the platform for ten seconds is nine seconds too long. She lives her life with Swiss Watch precision that takes my breath away and I wish I could emulate. Unlike before, when I never saw the same person twice on the trains because I was traveling to random places at random times, now the morning platform crew is familiar to me. The same set of businessmen and women wait for the train while reading their morning newspapers, mostly the vacuous and inane (but free) Metro or countless Dan Brown novels. One day I looked over the shoulder of a woman reading Recognizing and Treating Cutaneous Anthrax with photographs that made me think twice about getting breakfast that morning. An old woman who once sat next to me reading a pornographic novel had much the same effect. In addition to the businessmen, there are a few secondary school kids who my mind highlights like the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List. I was aware of students before but, now that the reality of working with them has settled in, I can't help but notice them. The train pulls into the station and the commuters board. Unlike the London Underground with its uniform trains, you never know what's coming down the line on the National Rail. Mostly it's the standard commuter train with automatic doors and small seats, but sometimes luxury first-class coaches arrive or old-fashion trains. Sometimes it's a Frankenstein-like mix of all three. I prefer the old-fashion trains the best with their little cabins and manual doors. While the seating arrangement is wildly inconvenient for commuters, boarding an old train feels like the beginning of a journey to someplace far away and magical, Hogwarts perhaps. Plus, there is something deeply satisfying about the clump!... clump!...... clump! sound of the individual doors closing that automatic doors just can't match. As we pull into London Bridge, I often see the trainspotters at the far end of the platforms. These are men whose hobby is watching trains. With their notebooks and cameras they capture and record the serial number written on the locomotive -- and what they do with this information is anybody's guess. After arriving at London Bridge, I switch to platform 5 or 6 to get the train to Waterloo East. Normally, this change goes smoothly, but one morning I was waiting in the train on platform 6 while train after train departed from the opposite platform, 5. Eventually a skinny woman next to me couldn't take the unexplained delay anymore and tried to push her way out. Now, it's said that when humans master genetic engineering some soccer coach is going to breed a goalie the exact size and shape of the goal post. Such a woman blocked the door of the train. ``Excuse me, excuse me,'' said the skinny woman as she tried to get around, but diplomacy soon gave way and `excuse me,' became ``get out of my way, you fat cow!'' as she shoved the woman's great bulk aside and elbowed her way out. The cow responded with an equally diplomatic ``Up yours, you skinny cunt!'' The skinny woman ran onto the train at platform 5 and turned around so the two women could glare at each other through the open doors. It was a cold, High-Noon, gunslinger stare. I expected tumble weed to blow across the space between them as they waited to see whose train would pull out first. The doors of my train closed first and, as we departed the station, the fat cow turned to the rest of the passengers with a victorious expression and the words, ``See? That's what she gets!'' as though the fat woman had actively accomplished something that day. Next in my commute I step off the train at Waterloo East, I begin to get to that feeling I so love about London, the feeling of being somewhere important. From the platform I can see 90 degrees of the London Eye, the kind of structure only built in important places. (I would see 180 degrees if not for the ugly building of an unnamed Large Oil Corporation blocking way.) I love the London Eye for it is a bit of arc that sneaks into the skyline in unexpected places as a contrast with all the vertical. If, as is sometimes rumored, the city ever takes it down, I will grieve. From Waterloo East, I take an overland bridge to Waterloo. Here, in the long enclosed space, I listen as the footsteps of the crowd fall in and out of sync and the science nerd inside of me thinks about wave addition. The footfalls are just random noise most of the time but, as will inevitably happen if you wait long enough, for two or three steps everyone marches together. This part of my morning commute is, from a time perspective, strictly unnecessary. There is a semi-hidden staircase out of Waterloo East that takes me on a faster route to King's College, but I take the longer walk because it brings me to the part of my commute I enjoy the most: Waterloo Station proper. Down the escalator and there it is: a huge open space with 21 train platforms (plus the underground) and hundreds of people like myself passing through. This is the kind of beauty one finds in a city and I can't help but take in a big, satisfied breath of air every time I enter. As if that wasn't enough, Waterloo is also an international rail station. I still can't quite grok traveling from the capital of one nation to another by train. It's 732 kilometers from Washington DC to the closest neighboring capital, Ottawa, and 3029 kilometers as the crow flies to the next closest, Mexico City. If I had the inclination and the financial resources I could get from London to Paris in two and a half hours on the Eurostar and that makes me giddy. I usually stop for a moment at the terminal to read the big sign saying passports are required beyond this point and read off the destinations. And every morning, I'm surprised to see Disney Land on the list. How very disorienting. I now go underground and take the complex, circular subway that surrounds the London IMAX. I have nothing against subways (underground walkways to Americans) I don't mind the layered paths and concrete structures that make it a playground for the free-style urban jumpers or a cardboard metropolis for the homeless. What I can't stand is the poem. On the staircase leading down to the subway, on one of the support columns where it is impossible not to read, is written a stanza from a poem: I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face like your once eager kiss. I feel the same way about poetry as `compassionate' conservatives feel about homosexuality: if you want to write poetry, that's fine with me as long as you do it in the privacy of your own home with consenting adults and don't force me to see it in public. For the length of the walk, all eighty paces, there it is on the wall. Everyday I try my hardest not to read it, but it's the kind of thing that forces itself on my mind the more I try to ignore it. The only part I intentionally read is the author's name at the end. I burn that name into my mind so if I'm ever at a party of writers and a woman introduces herself as Sue Hubbard I won't miss my opportunity for revenge. After I get out of the subway, I have a quick look across the Thames for the skyline of London to soothe my mind before entering King's College and starting my day. |
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Copyright © 2004 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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