I'd only been in Boston for two days and already I wanted to shoot myself. It was a Tuesday in early April, and it was freezing. The wind, the snow, the rain... I could feel it all soaking through my clothes and shoes the second I set foot outside the scratched up glass doors of my gloomy third-rate motel. I was pissed at my boss for sending me to this place and even more pissed at the city for enhancing my already darkened mood. Snide and sometimes violent thoughts ran through my mind like some sort of mantra, scrolling across my eyes like an LED marquee with Tourette's. This was going to be one shitty week.
The people that I encountered were either extremely polite or insanely douchey. The former made me feel bad about my cynical remarks and the latter just pissed me off even more. It was a real pickle. Avoiding human contact was the best idea. And yet even that depressed me. I was so lonely. I should have been at home, perhaps not with Him, but at least in the same town in case He decided to have the decency to contact me. Shaking my head, I told myself to stop being an idealistic little fool, and muttered a sarcastic remark to my mother who had told me this trip was going to be "an experience."
I wiled away the many hours alone in the dark of my motel room, attempting to entertain myself while not freezing my ass off. I succeeded in neither. The gigantic radiator below the dusty window sill was on its last legs. In fact, nearly every electrical appliance in the damned building seemed to be at least 25 years old and in barely passable condition. This was not counting the alarm clock that woke me every morning at 7 A.M. sharp with a most univiting and piercing siren that I quite possibly hated more than anything at the moment. It signaled the beginning of another cold, miserable day, and tore me from warm sleep, my one escape from having to live my life.
Hailing a cab whose driver fell into one of the two aforementioned categories, I would arrive at my client's office structure, which seemed to still be running the A.C. on full blast despite the season. Cold fluorescent lights, cheap fake plastic potted plants and that signature office smell-- stale coffee filters and slightly damp carpet-- would greet me. And again, the contact with other people! Actually, I must say, my client did not fall into one of the two descriptions, but rather was the most oblivious and bumbling person I have ever met. He was short, balding, and rather rotund. And even though he was quite large, his faded gray suit still seemed too big for him and hung loosely about him, especially in the jacket. And he wore the thickest horn rimmed glasses I'd ever seen... the lenses were so thick I couldn't help but wonder if the things were actually made from two miniature magnifying glasses. He seemed to be in a constant state of confusion, whether I was asking him a question in an attempt to clear up some work-related topic, or inquiring about the weather. I'm sure I wouldn't have been in a much better state than he though, if I lived here.
On the evening of my fourth day, Thursday, I wondered if I could walk back to my motel without freezing to death completely. It was only raining lightly, but it was still frigid as hell. Buttoning up my trench coat to the neck I breathed out a few steaming clouds of breath as though to test the temperature. I figured that I could end it all that way, but I was also too lazy and tired to go through with it. Instead I walked across a bridge wrapped in a shroud of fog, headlights from the sparse traffic emerging and fading in and out like glowing ghosts.
I walked for a while and after some time, I felt like I had no control over my body. I felt like I was in a daze. Perhaps because I was numb from the cold, or perhaps because I was just numb with purposelessness. I somehow descended the icy steps of a subway station without slipping and found myself at a platform. I had the vague impression of a few other people around me, but altogether I felt quite alone, like I was floating in some shadow of the world I once knew. When the car arrived I boarded like some automated machine, sitting down at one of the dingy turquoise upholstered seats.
And then, quite abruptly, a feeling of calmness floated over me. Then again, there's always been something about riding in vehicles that's been comforting to me. The feeling of moving while you are at rest, watching the countryside, or in this case, the tunnel lights flashing by in the window... I felt a bit better. And the lights, though fluorescent like those in my client's office building, were a lovely golden color that made me feel like I was warm for once in this city.
I felt like clouds were being lifted, and then I happened to look up and notice a man sitting on one of the benches about ten feet from me. He was about middle aged or so... I'm really bad at gauging ages. There was really nothing terribly extraordinary about him at all. He was perhaps a businessman on his way home from work, accustomed to the drudgery of a long hard day. But I did feel a kind of aura about him that was calming, like the gentle vibration of the car we were riding in. And his face had an expression of dull enduring pain that I somehow related to immediately. I felt like I was looking into a mirror of a man who reflected all of the sorrow I had ever felt.
And, well... I can't really explain it well, but though our eyes met for only a brief instant and nothing more, I felt like I had told him everything about myself and my thoughts and my feelings in that one glance. As if in that one instant I had poured out all of the frustration and bad feeling I had ever experienced, which in turn evaporated then and there into the flickering fluorescent lights. And even more strangely, I felt like he had done the same for me.
Though we didn't speak or look at each other again, I felt like I had made a connection with a person for the first time in a long while. I know all of this sounds corny or cheesy, and I guess it is in retrospect. But you know how things are when you're caught up in a moment. Where it doesn't matter if things sound good in writing or to other's ears, all that matters is how you felt and how you perceived it at the time. Even I have to admit that I feel a bit silly writing about it now, but that's life, that's just how it happened.
It only lasted for a minute or too, and then, as if on cue, the car stopped at the station nearest my motel, and both he an I got up to exit. Again, no words, nothing, but I departed the car and ascended the stairs again into the wintry urban landscape. The cold drizzling had by now turned to pouring rain, but I didn't bother to run the few streets to my motel. The warmth of the moment on the subway lingered with me, and I was drenched by the time I arrived at my old gray room.
As if to make the moment last, I set about rearranging the furniture in my room to mimic my own childhood bedroom while I was growing up in my parents' house. The dresser on the south wall, the desk on the north, and the bed on the east wall, just below the window. And as I sat on the bed cross-legged the way I used to as a child, passing the time peering outside at the world through my second story window, I thought how much better the energy flowed through the room now that I had rearranged things in accordance with proper feng shui.
There's never enough time, but I at least wanted to capture a small snapshot of my life, at least for today.
I remember when you first came to our small little town here in Georgia. You moved here from Pennsylvania with your father shortly after your parents divorced. He took a job at the mechanics' and you moved into the house down by Cicada and Plum. 