Mind the Gap

So I've changed the title of my blog. It's still credited to Freehold Arts, but if you look closely you'll see that the name is now oficially "Mind the Gap."


Mind the Gap

It's a saying that's really rarely used anymore, more often "Watch" the gap, but more often "please use caution while exiting the train." Are you kidding me? Where's the beauty in that?

A Commuter's Guide to the Daily Grind

I wonder how long it will take me to be figured out. How long before someone on the 6:10 AM out of Woodcliff Lake understands why that weird skinny bald guy is hammering away at his keyboard. "He's the 'Mind the Gap' guy" they'll prod and poke.

Right.

I recently relocated to the East Coast from LA for reasons which, at the moment, escape me.

I'm angling down a hill in Woodcliff Lake, NJ bracing myself from the wind, truly frightened a misstep may cause me to bite it. I arrive at the station ten minutes early.

There's really nowhere to stand, so I pitch my umbrella up against a wall and stare numbly out at the sheets of rain. For the first time in a week I smile. I managed to make it all the way down the hill without wetting myself too badly.

My house, as you can tell, is a stone's throw form the Woodcliff Lake trian station. I can hear the whistle from my bedroom. This makes me, now, for better or worse, a commuter.

I don't like it. It takes me well over an hour every day to get to and from work. It's inhumane. Godless.

My father called me tonight and noted, "Days like this, I wonder how I did it." Then he laughed. "When you're young you do it because you have to."

It's that same crazy talk that guides these automatons through their stultifying days.

If I told you the horrors I see on these trains you'd never believe me.

But I'm going to try. & I'll do it in the first person of me.

A three word phrase of caution getting onto and off the train. I hear it, or some variation thereof, four times every single day

You see the beauty of Bergen County, is there is no direct line to NYC.

Who lives like this?

Like I said, me.

And this guy. Cock of the walk. No idea who he is, but he knows everything.

New train schedule before it comes out. Who's driving the train today? Who all the people at the stop are.

If anyone is going to out me to NJT, ultimately it's going to be this clod.

For now I lay low.

Half asleep with my paper and Treo, checking e-mail and scores.

Praying I go unnoticed. Noticing all the while.

Must go now. 5am wake-up call to do it all again.