Finding Momentum

It’s a strange life, this is. I’m stand­ing at the Cal­train sta­tion, watch­ing the 195 leave me behind in the dust, watch­ing a long, slow whis­tle escape from the engine train and sur­round me with its delight­ful irony. Tonight I’ll get home an hour later, maybe by 1AM if I’m lucky.

I wob­ble off my bike, sweaty and more than a lit­tle frus­trated, and stum­ble over to the near­est bench. There’s nobody to curse but steel, diesel, and a heart­less timetable. I kick a cock­roach; it rolls over and scur­ries away. Hrmph. Still grumpy. Okay, I’ll vent on Twit­ter. Bad idea Andrew, broad­cast­ing angst over the Inter­net is a cul­tural faux pas (but look at what you’re read­ing, ha!).

Life is just really dif­fer­ent. I just real­ized why–it’s become much harder to attach mean­ing to things any­more. I wake up, I catch the J bus, I walk into work, I fix bugs, draw mock­ups, code fea­tures, grab lunch, take a run, catch the bus, go home, watch a movie… and do it all over again. Life’s more rou­tine. My iden­tity sud­denly doesn’t feel as much a small-group leader, or a men­tor, or a stu­dent, or a friend, or a musi­cian any more as it is mostly now as a… what?

–

It’s a warm sum­mer evening here at the Cal­train sta­tion. I sit here for an hour and take in the rhodo­den­dron breeze. Forced to stay, and sit, and watch, and be.

A blind man slowly teeters up to the fare booth and orders a ticket. “WELCOME TO CALTRAIN!” the lady with the dig­i­tal voice blares, and the blind man, star­tled, silences her with the pow­ers of Braille. A cock­roach scur­ries under­foot and heads for the light.

I close my eyes and lis­ten to the rhythms of the city: the groan­ings of the train tracks, the soft rush of traf­fic, peo­ple con­vers­ing faintly just over the other side.