It calms me just to sit on a train and know that no one knows who I am--I'm no one's daughter, no one's friend, no one's go-to person in a crisis or the girl they'll call when the first five people on their list don't pick up the phone. I'm no one's ANYTHING. I'm sitting there on those hard seats, squished between a snoring black man and a girl wearing over-sized sunglasses and a leather jacket (I'm secretly laughing at the ironic juxtaposition), and I'm absolutely LOVING the anonymity that being amongst strangers grants me. I could be anyone. Better yet, I could be SOMEONE--someone important. Someone cool (because in real life I'm not, not even a little). Someone off to some exotic place to meet up with her exotic friends, disguised as the girl-next-door but sporting a small, self-satisfied smile because the rest of the passengers have NO IDEA that inside my oversized handbag is an LBD and a pair of KILLER heels and the night is young and so am I and there's a rooftop party and clinking champagne glasses and SO MUCH FUN on the agenda. Ha! That's not true, of course, but it COULD be. That's the beauty of anonymity--everyone COULD be something other than what they really are. The snoring black man? He could be an artist, a muralist--he's just spent the past six months in Greece painting people's likenesses on vast beige walls and he's only just returned home, and he's been spending his days riding every bus and train in the city in the desperate, desperate hope that inspiration will strike again and WHAM!--he'll whisk himself away to the next foreign locale and take up his paintbrush once again. The Hipster sitting across from me is a budding musician--he just had a loud, angry fight with his Asian girlfriend but instead of being bothered by it he's thrilled because as she was screaming at him a dozen lyrics wrote themselves in his head and he's off to the recording studio to make some magic. So many people, so many stories, so many COULD-BEs and MAYBEs and WHAT-IFs. It makes me smile. It makes me feel alive again. I need this--this sitting on a train, alone, silent, watchful--because my life is filled with BUSY-NESS and obligation and I sometimes forget to hope. I forget to SEE (even though I LOOK); I forget to LIVE (even though my heart never stops beating). I forget that the world is vast, fluid, poignant...I've seen so much and yet I've seen nothing at all, because beneath what's readily apparent there are entire universes that we can only see when we allow ourselves the space to believe. Believe in what? In magic. In novelty. In a world that is more than appearances and duties and responsibilities; a world where riding a train is the adventure of a lifetime and every single person you encounter is sharing that moment with you because they're MEANT to and maybe you didn't utter a word to them but their very presence is shaping you, changing you, CREATING you, YOU, the YOU that is more than "Target Cashier", "Grace's Daughter", "Jim's Wife", "Little League Soccer Coach." YOU is limitless. YOU is indefinable. YOU is the unassuming college boy with the Star Wars T-shirt: others look at him and think they have him pegged, but do they know that he's riding the train because he volunteers at the Soup Kitchen downtown, and that after that he'll stop in at the hardware store to buy a pack of seeds because he's an avid gardener? YOU resists categorization, tidy labeling, trite stereotyping. YOU is what you can be when there's no one to tell you otherwise; when the voices of your teachers and parents and friends are finally, FINALLY silenced and a stranger boards the train you're riding and your eyes briefly meet and you almost fall out of your seat because for one quick second you see yourself reflected in her eyes and you're different; you're new; you're the man you've always wanted, HOPED, to be (but you didn't dare because the ones who know you say you're something else entirely).
That's what's so wonderful about being seen through a different lens. About SEEING through a different lens. The mundane suddenly becomes magical and what you dismissed yesterday suddenly captivates you because you finally stop resisting. So I sit on the train and watch as people get in and get off, and if someone looks my way I smile and write their story in my head, and even if I'm way off mark I don't care because I'm someone else too and all that really matters in that instant is that I'm there and he's there and she's there--we're ALL there, on that train, heading to God-knows-where--and we're strangers but not really because we're all sons and daughters; friends and lovers; coworkers and neighbors and church-goers and whatever other umbrella we fall under in "real life." Here on this train? This isn't real life. This is no-man's land. This is Limbo--the in-between place where we can rest; where we can stop sucking in our stomach and loosen our tie a bit; where we can reapply our lipstick, smooth our hair, wipe the shine off our forehead and pretend (when we get off the train) that we looked that flawless all along. It makes me happy. I watch as trees and dilapidated houses and the L.A. River fly past my window and I can breathe again because, for the duration of the train ride, I've been allowed to hope again. Or rather, I'VE allowed myself to hope again.
I hope that there's an infinite amount of Beauty to uncover. I hope that one day I'll look out at the horizon and see not what could be but what IS: I've already lived my dream. I hope I'll never look out at the city I live in from unimaginable heights and not feel a flutter of awe deep down in my belly; I hope, like the song says, that I'll still feel small when I stand beside the ocean, no matter how much time has passed or how much pain I've known or how much "success" I think I've achieved. I hope and I hope and I hope, and then I close my eyes and take a deep breath and hope some more. I am, after all, riding the train, and I have all the time in the world.
