Journal of a Solitude
If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me. ~Song title by Jimmy Buffet
She has a dream that she boards an eastbound train alone. She chooses a seat on the left side next to the window and reads the instructions for exiting in the event of an emergency. The train starts and rattles forward with a slight jostling from side to side. She looks outside while the train passes under a wide immense span of sky. Each city she rides by has the same strip of highways, large supermarkets and fast-food chains. The small scatter of towns has the same farms, brown cows grazing in fields, rusted red silos, and barns with partially caved in metal roofs. At one stop she sees a woman dressed only in a housedress standing on the platform. Next to her is a child with thick black hair woven into cornrows and tied with ribbons. The child waves at her so she waves back.
Later the sky turns pink, scarlet and black in quick succession. Now that it’s dark she sees that her image is reflected on the plane glass. She pretends it is her twin hovering outside the train like a guardian angel. She hears rap music playing faintly on someone's Walkman before she falls asleep.
Days later, unaware of the state she is in, which stations she's passed, the train and she come to a stop. She finds a hotel room and spends the night watching the shadows that the passing cars throw onto the window shades.
In her newly found town she meets new people. She wants to hear all their stories. Her smiling intelligence probes them and before long everyone divulges all their small wickedness’s to her. It is only later that they realize they had neglected to ask her about herself and therefore know nothing about her. She keeps all their narrations in a scrapbook in her mind, a separate page for people. She is still not much of a talker, but the people here do not react to her quiet manner the way they had in her other life; now they seemed to be drawn to her. They perceive it as a charming artistic temperament rather than arrogant aloofness.
After an afternoon spent reading the paper with a bunch of homeless guys at the public library she walks back "home". Her house is minuscule, with a kitchen the size of a phone booth; but she likes it. Each night through her window drifts the smell of spices from the Indian market. She hears married couple arguments, children screaming in play. Somewhere a telephone is always ringing. It all makes her feel less alone.
Where does this end? What destiny does this anonymous American town hold for her? Something is so appealing to her about this prospect: making clean start a place where no one knows her, to be inaccessible and anonymous like May Sarton in some hidden coastal hamlet. It is a powerful temptation, that wanting to step outside of the present world and outside of hurting.
She has a dream that she boards an eastbound train alone. She chooses a seat on the left side next to the window and reads the instructions for exiting in the event of an emergency. The train starts and rattles forward with a slight jostling from side to side. She looks outside while the train passes under a wide immense span of sky. Each city she rides by has the same strip of highways, large supermarkets and fast-food chains. The small scatter of towns has the same farms, brown cows grazing in fields, rusted red silos, and barns with partially caved in metal roofs. At one stop she sees a woman dressed only in a housedress standing on the platform. Next to her is a child with thick black hair woven into cornrows and tied with ribbons. The child waves at her so she waves back.
Later the sky turns pink, scarlet and black in quick succession. Now that it’s dark she sees that her image is reflected on the plane glass. She pretends it is her twin hovering outside the train like a guardian angel. She hears rap music playing faintly on someone's Walkman before she falls asleep.
Days later, unaware of the state she is in, which stations she's passed, the train and she come to a stop. She finds a hotel room and spends the night watching the shadows that the passing cars throw onto the window shades.
In her newly found town she meets new people. She wants to hear all their stories. Her smiling intelligence probes them and before long everyone divulges all their small wickedness’s to her. It is only later that they realize they had neglected to ask her about herself and therefore know nothing about her. She keeps all their narrations in a scrapbook in her mind, a separate page for people. She is still not much of a talker, but the people here do not react to her quiet manner the way they had in her other life; now they seemed to be drawn to her. They perceive it as a charming artistic temperament rather than arrogant aloofness.
After an afternoon spent reading the paper with a bunch of homeless guys at the public library she walks back "home". Her house is minuscule, with a kitchen the size of a phone booth; but she likes it. Each night through her window drifts the smell of spices from the Indian market. She hears married couple arguments, children screaming in play. Somewhere a telephone is always ringing. It all makes her feel less alone.
Where does this end? What destiny does this anonymous American town hold for her? Something is so appealing to her about this prospect: making clean start a place where no one knows her, to be inaccessible and anonymous like May Sarton in some hidden coastal hamlet. It is a powerful temptation, that wanting to step outside of the present world and outside of hurting.
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