These are the lucky ones.
People who have jobs in America.
They are commuting into Boston and I’m already on their train going to a doctor’s appointment.
It is 7:10 AM.
No commuter seems to have a face even when they are sitting right next to me.
Hello, invisible people.
Hurry, will you?
Our train is moving.
©Pat Coakley 2010
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**Select photographs of this blog and my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com
Isn’t it funny how we put a value on our time? We swap chunks of our lives to not only buy food and shelter but also ……. stuff.
I wonder how many people if when they were told they only had six months to live would exchange a month or two of their remaining time to buy a plasma TV? Yet so many of us use up our lives to buy things we don’t really need or want.
Don’t you be puttin’ down “stuff” lovers. I love my stuff! If I only had 6 months to live, I’d be venal and charge a 60 inchTV and not worry about paying the bill. Cmon, I’d be a wreck and not as taciturn as you. I would have to watch TV during the night as it is common knowledge that TV in the middle of the night hypnotizes any monsters under the bed. You keep a baseball bat under the bed or a machete or something if I remember correctly. We all have our weapons.
Yes, the lucky ones… because in the land of rabid idividualism one sinks, or swims with the help of a job that earns income. Being without a job is one thing and forces a person to be creative to find their calling and meaning in life. Being without income — in poverty in a land where there is so much, but so little help — is quite another with not much to recommend it. What is poignant, and represented well by your picture and post, is how most “jobs” color the soul a dark gray.
By the way, you and razzbuffnik make me laugh sometimes!
Thank you, Mr. Diddams, for “most jobs color the soul a dark gray” which is exactly what I see in commuter faces! And, yes, that swashbuckler-down-under with the sword under his bed makes me laugh sometimes, too.
Taciturn?
Me?
Anyone who knows me would describe me as loquacious.
Perhaps you meant spartan, in the material sense rather than the laconic sense.
or perhaps…..
just plain old, every day, transcendentally magnificent!
By the way I don’t keep either a baseball bat or a machete under my bed. Far too mundane. I keep a one and a half hand bastard sword…..
…. for dealing with bastards, nearby in the corner of my beadroom.
May I recommend Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” to your laconic self as a companion piece for your sword? On my top 5 movies of 2009. You are quite right “laconic” suits you far better than taciturn or spartan, for that matter, since I’ve seen some of the recipes you’ve posted and a “Spartan Chef” would not include dairy and beef products that would clog the Panana Canal.
Laconic: “crisp on the verge of rude” which is how I cook my veggie, btw, and how I prefer my aussie bastards, too. But, hey…that’s just me.
I think I dated a two-handed bastard once…no, maybe, twice…when I did that sorta thing…They were so loquacious they ended up under the bed with the other monsters who were quite taciturn because the TV was on. Sigh.
Like you, that search for the transcendentally magnificent usually stops each morning when I look in the mirror.
“Good Morning, world, how did I get so fine?”
Pat~I really think that I would hate a train commute to work everyday. I did take the public city bus to college everyday, and it got old real quick. I guess I’m spoiled. My commute to work is usually 5 minutes by car. i love the illustration.
Renee, I love trains, even commuter ones! But, an hour commute to work and back might get a bit old, I agree.