Train Rides Always Turn Into Poems that Blur to the Meaningless

10-16-98 F 4:25 PM
On the commuter train to Oceanside.  Wonder if you can get a drink.  That's about it.  I'm going to be a bit late.  Twenty minutes.  What else?  Pretty non-descript cars I'm in.  Everybody's reading newspapers except the long-haired guy across from me who just stares at the backs of his sunglasses.  A lady with headphones just sat down across from me.  I guess I could take this train to Fullerton if I wanted.  A gray-bearded guy next to me reads Lord Foul's Bane.  I read that in the 8th grade.  An Indian kid named Tari Razi loaned it to me.  He's probably rich now.  I remember from the locker room he had the fattest ball sack I'd ever seen.  Elephantitis or maybe he just hadn't learned to jack yet and was suffering from a serious backlog.  Whatever.  I should have picked out a seat up top.  When I'm done with this, I can knock off another chapter or so of The Sportswriter.  After that, I'll read Krakauer's account of Everest, Into Thin Air.  Then I'll go see the movie Everest at the Imax.  I'm not breathing so good.  I'd never make it to the top of Everest.  I wish this stupid train would get moving.  Shirelle's going to a bunch of parties this weekend.  She'll bone someone.  What else?  This seat is pretty damned uncomfortable.  It's going to take an hour and half to get there.  I have only eaten a bran muffin today.  I got it at the donut shop across from school.  What the hell else?  What the fuck else?  Feel a slight sore throat trying to assert itself.  When will this fucking train get going?  [detailed blue ink drawing of a hand]  Ah, we're moving--moving along past graffitoed, barbed-wired, cinder-block walls.  Some kind of housing project, and the mighty Los Angeles Concrete Gully flows under heaps of rubble, under 1920's LA Boom-time bridges; downtown's skyscrapers sparkle in the late afternoon like a futuristic dream.  The train picks up speed.  Click clacks some, roars under overpasses.  SNFK 97 says the gully.  GBCK says the gully.  VADER DOG says the gully.  We slow past the birthplace of the city's garbage bins, go eerily slow through a haunted industrial wasteland southeast of the city.  The concrete mills stand like giant robots stalled in world domination.  GETX says a tanker car.  There's the ACE Metal Spinning Company.  Powerline towers await collapse.  Santa Fe Roadway.  JB Hunt  XTRA Lease Hyundai Transamerica Maersk Homburg Alliance Shippers INC.  REDON  All Purpose Spine Care Speed Queen