Trains of Thought

I'm in North Carolina this morning, preparing for a weekend retreat with a newish intentional community that wants to focus on Growing Roots: exploring more deeply what kind of community it wants to be, and how to get there from here.

I've just made a pot of strong coffee, and appreciated bouquets in the kitchen of fresh cut daffodils and narcissus. Sigh. As a denizen of Duluth, spring is only a concept at this point. It's way too early to be thinking of flowers—we're still trying to melt the 20" of snow that fell at Thanksgiving, and we cheer when temperatures creep above 32. You have to take your victories where you find them. The only yellow we'll see outdoors before May is what the neighborhood dogs leave after marking up a snow bank.

As readers of this blog know, I travel a good deal. I average more than one out-of-state trip every month—mostly as a process consultant and teacher, augmented by the occasional sojourn to visit friends and family. Mostly I accomplish this by train (if Amtrak goes out of business it will not be my fault).

As I've been doing this for more than 40 years, travel has become a routine and I've accumulated a considerable range of experiences, as well as the habit of noticing what happens around me. In today's essay I want to share a handful of gleanings from my last two days.

I. The Woman in the Seat Behind Me
I normally get to North Carolina (from Duluth) via three train legs: 
St Paul to Chicago (on the eastbound Empire Builder)
Chicago to Washington (on the eastbound Capitol Limited)
Washington to Raleigh (on the southbound Silver Star)

It takes two full days to accomplish all this, and the connections between trains are guaranteed, which means that Amtrak will take responsibility if I miss a connection in either Chicago or DC because of train delays.

Wednesday the Empire Builder was running smack on time when I boarded in St Paul and kept that exemplary pace through Columbus WI (the stop that services Madison). We were just 20 miles west of Milwaukee when all of that came to an end. Someone decided to commit suicide by driving in front of the freight train rumbling along on single track immediately in front of us and all hell broke loose. It took three hours to get the coroner out, find all the pieces of human remains, and clear up the mess. I can hardly imagine the trauma that the engineer of the freight train must have experienced. Even though there was absolutely nothing he or she could do to alter the outcome, it must have been horrifying to see it all unfold in front of you.

In any event, on the Empire Builder we suddenly went from running on time to being three hours in arrears. That put my connection to the Capitol Ltd in jeopardy and I immediately started thinking about plan B—which didn't exist until then. 

For the woman in the seat behind me, it was a different story. She immediately started complaining. Though she was traveling alone, there were multiple people she could reach via cell phone and she availed herself of that option to share her pain—over and over. She also pestered the car attendant for information whenever he passed by. He patiently realyed to her what he knew, but it was never enough to satisfy her, and she made her displeasure known—though I have no idea what she thought that was going to accomplish.

Essentially she was unhappy and felt compelled to let the world know about it. As far as I could discern she'd be late to Chicago and that complicated her plans to get picked up. (That was all? I tell, you some people have a low threshold for misery.) Was she inconvenienced? Yes. Was it Amtrak's fault? No. Was it the fault of the car attendant? No. Was it the fault of her fellow passengers‚ in particular the ones trapped within her acoustical envelope—we who could not escape the steady stream of vitriol and negativity that spewed forth during the interminable phone calls? No.

It was all about her, and she did not appear to have any awareness of the impact of her behavior on those around her. She had been wronged and therefore had carte blanche to bitch about it—with salty language that would make a stevedore blush. At one point she complained that she was now forced to be on the train for six hours. Could anyone imagine how awful that was? (Actually I was having a lot of trouble with that. I regularly string together train trips that last more than 36 hours, and typically enjoy them very much. I decided, however, to keep that opinion to myself.)

In reflecting on this, I reckon she was an external processor—someone who works through a distressful experience by talking about it. Unfortunately, I didn't witness any progression. She seemed stuck on play/repeat and we only heard the one discordant melody. To be fair, I'm an external processor also, though I like to think I exercise a good deal more discernment about when to share and with whom. Mostly I talk to myself.

At one point she told the car attendant that this was her first trip on Amtrak and she'd never ride the train again. To which the car attendant (under his breath but within earshot of the rest of us) replied that it was his sincere wish that that be so.

I shuddered to contemplate a world comprised solely of people who's reality is so small that a three-hour train delay caused by the tragedy of a suicide would so consume them in righteous indignation. Have humans evolved so little?

II. The Man in the Seat Across from Me
While sitting in front of the complainant above was bad enough, I got a double dose of TMI on that trip. The man across from me was traveling to St Louis to visit his mother, whose health was failing. Clearly an extrovert (I had witnessed him earlier in the day hold forth for hours in the Lounge Car—where I set myself up at a table to work on reports—until they cut off his alcohol purchasing) he got into an animated conversation with the woman across the aisle in the seat in front of me.

In the course of their low-level flirting (they were both unpartnered and in the hunt), it came out that he had recently broken up with a woman he considered too clingy and emotionally immature. Repeatedly, he reported that he was over her now… and then kept telling stories about the woman and how awful it was to be with her. It was very unpleasant to be caught in the sound track of his strained efforts to feel good about himself again, complicated by his listener's willingness to spin everything his way. I wanted to shout, "Can't you see what's going on?" but didn't.

The man spoke hopefully about the possibility of our train being late enough to miss his connection to St Louis so that he he'd be put up in a hotel by Amtrak and could get drunk. Maybe this was just a coping mechanism; maybe it was a lifestyle choice. I didn't get enough data on that to decide, but I'm happy to move on and let that mystery go unsolved.

I did not find this man attractive, and you have to wonder what it means when a person obsessed with getting shitfaced and unaware of where he stands on the grieving continuum considers another human being to be emotionally beneath him. 

For this man the late train represented opportunity; for the woman behind me it was extreme inconvenience. Neither, I noticed, was at peace with the reality in front of them. What a world. It makes it a little easier to understand how Trump finds people who will vote for him.

III. My Chauffeur in Durham
Per usual, the NC client group was lined up to provide local assistance once I got as close as I could via public transportation. Although I was originally scheduled to arrive by train into Raleigh around 9 pm last night, I missed my connection in Chicago and had to fly instead. (Amtrak was going to rebook me on the next day's Capitol Ltd, but that wouldn't get me into NC until after the retreat was underway, which was clearly unacceptable.)

Thus, the person who was on tap to collect me in Raleigh was redirected to get me at the RDU airport around 6 pm instead, which was actually less driving for him, and he wasn't up so late. In addition, he was familiar with the airport but had never been to the Raleigh Amtrak station, so that potential confusion was avoided. All together, the switch in plans worked well for the chauffeur, and I was able to settle into my digs that much earlier.

Like many, the guy who picked me up is an enthusiast of modern technology and had become in recent years a dedicated user of his Garmin to determine driving routes via GPS. I have been aware of this trend (who isn't?) but had not noticed how much this has resulted in an alarming atrophying of directional skills. 

It happened that his Garmin was temporarily unavailable in order to download a program update, and thus he was relying on the directional program that was bundled with his cell phone, a program he ordinarily doesn't use and was sufficiently different from his Garmin to be confusing. 

I watched with both bemusement (I was in no hurry) and concern as he stumbled his way between the airport and home, having to make at least thee course corrections en route because of wrong turns. Without his trusted technology, he was unsure of the way between the main regional airport (a place he had been many times) and his home of many years—a distance of about 30 miles. Think about that. He was apparently so habituated to relying on the GPS that he had become untethered from visual signals about the correct path. And it only took a few years for that to happen. 

I rarely use GPS technology, and can't imagine not being able to find my way home by visuals when I'm within 30 miles. This does not seem to me a good trend.

IV. No Reservations
I am shamelessly borrowing the title of Anthony Bourdain's successful food and travel television series (it ran for nine seasons) to make a point about word play. Not only do I love food and the exotic, which Bourdain clearly did as well, but I have no reservations about word play. I have standards (whether you can tell or not) but catholic tastes and a low barrier to indulgence.

Yesterday, while flying to NC, I was reading The Club, a recently published (2019), carefully researched historical work by Leo Damrosch subtitled: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age. It profiles what happened during the period 1764-84, the last 20 years of Johnson's life, when a number of extraordinary people met at London's Turk's Head Tavern every Friday evening to indulge in food, drink, and intelligent conversation—on anything under the sun they found of interest.

Among those profiled are: 
Samuel Johnson, the sage of an age, and creator of the first modern dictionary
James Boswell, Johnson's biographer
Joshua Reynolds, the portraitist
Edward Gibbon, the historian
Adam Smith. the economist
Edmund Burke, the political essayist and orator
Oliver Goldsmith, the playwright
David Garrick, the actor and director
Richard Sheridan, the playwright

It turns out that Burke was an inveterate punster, for which he was much chafed by others in the club. (fellow clubster Bennet Langton once remarked, "Burke hammered his wit upon an anvil, and the iron was cold. There were no sparks flashing or flying all about"). So much for not having standards (or perhaps, sufficient skill).

A few pages, and a century later, Damrosch shares the story of someone having complained to James Joyce about his penchant for puns, stating that they were trivial, to which the great Irish author is reputed to have replied without pause, "Yes, and some of them are quadrivial."

(Note: the historical underpinnings of this bon mot come from a medieval educational practice that is now obscure to most of us; lessons were invariably taught in Latin and university curriculum generally began with three subjects (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), known as the trivium, followed by the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music theory, and astronomy).

Now doesn't that sequence just make your day? It made mine. You could ask me to stop playing with words, but it wouldn't do any good. You may as well ask me to stop enjoying food and drink, analyzing what's happening in group dynamics, or leading an examined life. It's far too late to change any of that. It's who I am. You have the same choices I usefully do: you can enjoy me, ignore me, or leave me when the train gets to Chicago.