Tick tock & Rahmbo

It has been a while since I last reported, and much has changed in that time, though, truthfully, much has also remained the same.  I am still me.  The earth still rotates on its axis, changing the seasons and making the sun appear to rise and fall in that cerulean abyss we call the sky. And people, well, people still ride the train to-and-fro.

What has changed is that the constraints under which I began this web log have concluded, as have my days as a scarce white face on a southbound Red Line train.  The ‘me’ I still am has now completed an undergraduate degree, rather successfully I might add (hey, a little revelry is in order considering how long it took me).  And that ‘me’ that I still am is now one of a throng of white faces lost in a shoal of daily travelers that patronize the Brown Line (perhaps a name change is in order?).  This reality is further compounded by the fact that I blend in far more now than when I wrote my first entry.  Suffice it to say it is easier to be inconspicuous when immersed in a homogeneous-looking crowd.  However, the jury is still out on whether or not that merits the proverbial bestowing of gilded wings to this Fly On da Wall…

Time frames merge into one another most days on the Brown Line.  I lose track of how long I’ve been reading, or how long I’ve been gazing out the window searching for something remotely less boring to watch. I almost lament that this line has provided less fodder for observation; though, while there seems to be fewer ostentatious characters to report on, there is no lack of obnoxicity (yes, I made that word up), even if it be of a slightly different variety.  In the not-that-distant past, my presence drew a measurable amount of stares on the “L”.  These days however, Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems to be more interesting to gawk at.  Far be it for me to be jealous of the attention he receives; I rather relish my anonymity and, preferring to remain incognito, am content to have all eyes are on him versus me.  Three sightings hardly constitutes him being a regular Brown Line rider, so his “celebrity” status still peaks enough interest compared to the other somewhat mundane 9-to-5ers crammed into that former locomotive, much like livestock on a semi headed to a rodeo. 

A peculiar force field, this thing we call time.  Many a person have ruminated on this most obscure element of nature.  Stereotypically we often speak about it in terms of pseudo-ownership: being on it (like one is on top of a table); running out of it (like one runs out of toilet paper); not having enough of it (like one doesn't have enough funds to buy Louboutins); wanting to save it or spend it (like one can store it up for retirement); give, take or share it (as though it were ever in our possession or under our control to manipulate).  It’s riveting how time can drag on, fly by or stand still, depending on your physical location and sapiens environment.  **On a totally different, yet equally riveting note, I find it amusing that sapiens is a Latin word meaning wise (to be), and/or rational.  This amuses me because the vast majority of the earth is, in my pretentious opinion, populated by profoundly unwise and irrational homo sapiens, and, though many of you might agree, to the vast majority of you this quasi-oxymoronic statement may appear highly unwise and supremely irrational in and of itself. The End.**

On average, Brown Liners (again, with the exception of Rahmbo) come across alternatively as a rather aloof and/or comatose bunch.  Sometimes I wonder if they are all under some spell (perhaps the tech trance, what with all their Pods, Pads, Crackberries, Kindlings, Pssts and the like).  Do they pause to evaluate the humanness of time, the intrinsic value of the life that stood in the very spot they now stand in, just moments, hours or day before them?  Do they think “this is the place Rahm Emanuel was just standing in” or “a homeless mother and child once sat in the seat I now occupy”?

Walking home yesterday afternoon I stood there, where, not a nychthemeron earlier, a middle-aged gentleman who was clearly battling something more than the average dosage of life’s complications, made a seemingly deliberate yet somewhat half-hearted attempt to end his life by traversing a bridge railing and dropping 20 feet into a very shallow riverbed.  This was juxtaposed in my mind with another equally vivid memory: not a week prior I sat in a friend’s vehicle just feet away from this spot, having an impromptu conversation about the transcendent beauty in learning from your life’s decisions.  Add to that the plethora of extemporaneously revelational, epiphanic, heart-to-heart conversations I’ve had inside the cars of nearly every person generous enough to have ever given me a ride home.

We like to entertain the notion that we can somehow become masters of the time and space around us and within which we live, without stopping to realize that time is actually a master of us; we live according to its constraints, its precepts and conditions.  If honored, time can be most benevolent.  Conversely, when abused, time can be a particularly insidious master.

What are we to do then with the time we are allotted?  Is it not a commodity we attempt to exploit, vigorously trying to bend it to our will, realizing only at the last minute, and probably to our detriment that…there is no spoon…?

Tick tock tick tock...