read | memorial day

a mouthy pair of second-graders -- a fat-faced girl and a boy in a collar and tie -- were backwards in their chairs across the aisle, giving a running commentary through their noses of the train ride out of town. they laughed hard and often at things that honestly weren't that funny. when we rumbled through spuyten duyvil, the boy made a song of its name to the tune of a disney song and the girl's eyes rolled around in her head.

on the hudson-facing side of the car, we were three in a four-man seat and were staring absently out the window at the light show of moving water. having temporarily exhausted our well of conversation, we were thinking quietly about ourselves. i was sticky-eyed from waking up early to load everything i could think of into a burgundy camping pack that the sun had turned red over the course of many trips.

walking the usual brooklyn streets in the ratty thing, hours before all the famous brunches opened their doors to the bedheads squinting behind their sunglasses like they were practicing for a new wave movie, my self-loathing eased up a minute. made me feel separate, more like the outsider i imagined myself to be. just a jerk passing through, going for a train. just some straight-up asshole in a backpack.

in the deluded moment, that backpack gave my clowny life a shot of legitimacy like it was a honking nose or a curly wig. same as the ray bans did for the omelette-set. if you fall on your face dressed as bozo (or puke eggs with your hair all over, or scoff at your city life in a big red backpack), you're only doing your job. just need the right uniform. funny how being like everybody else can make you feel shiny as hell if you don't think about it too hard sometimes. funny how wildly egocentric you gotta be to bother hating yourself in the first place. blah blah blah.

on the train, noon was still a ways off, but afternoon light was already plucking the river's dimples like pins do to the steel comb of a music box. playing the hudson like it was a kalimba, throwing sparks off every ripple. course i was too deep in that adolescent mindfuck described above to notice much. my seatmates had taken one look at that fool backpack, scowled and sent me home to swap it out for an everyday messenger bag of all things. i didn't care particularly, but then again i did, and had enough pride left to choke down that i was missing out on the river and the chipmunk chorus still singing "spuyten duh-ville, spuyten duh-ville, if it doesn't scare you, then nobody will," across the aisle.

right then, old rolly eyes quit singing along, looked over our heads, out the window, and said to herself, loud and slow, "i want to marry the river so i can dive inside of it," and then, just like that, i could see the river fine. half an hour later, off the train and on top of a mountain, we ate banana chips and cranberries and pointed out the far-off houses until it started to rain. caterpillars were all around. the next day was memorial day.

DOWNLOAD: Bonnie "Prince" Billy - So Everyone [mp3]