1.30.13        Any Minute Now

     I remember standing at the train tracks, 3 am in Brattleboro,VT, mid winter, the air frozen as soon as it left my nostrils, feet stamping desperately to keep any semblance of feeling, not a soul around, as I contemplated making a quick run around the corner, down the wooden planks approaching the beautiful old steel bridge ,to catch a peek at the endless Connecticut raging below and past the sleeping small city. Wondering would I manage to race there and back before the train came barreling down the line, without warning, to slow and stop only if I was standing, stark, under the one station light, letting the engineer know my intentions.
      On my way to New York,  I was to visit my extra parents, taking the only transportation I had...the only train option, arriving 4 hours later in time for their early morning pickup as they pulled round the corner into the small station, eyes creased with sleep, delighted to see me, one extra daughter to add to the mix of many sons. 
      I was wearing my Tasmanian Devil fur coat- a head-to-toe dead animal skin gift from a friend that kept me toasty when all else failed, my fancy dancy girl heeled leather boots, obligatory  softly worn jeans, a few packs of cigarettes, a small 8 oz of Black Velvet so as not to be caught without, and a woven carpet bag replete with underwear ,toothbrush and not much else. 
      Behind me, sleeping in the darkness, I left their son...far up in a northern town, his wandering eyes finally a tiresome trial to me, at almost 21 with almost 6 years together , slung beneath our belts.  
      And to the side, up the dark, freeze constricted hill, slumbered another guy, older, who it turns out was always fond of women who were with another......the both of them it turns out somehow inspired by their mutual intentions with me, becoming some sort of odd fast friends as I lived with one, wandered about with the other, not really thinking about the situation. Simply trying to find my way. Completely unaware that 18 or 20 was virtual infancy, something that none of us, especially in the tumult of the irretrievably tumultuous 70's, ever realized, so fixed we were on questioning and leaping toward what seemed true.
      Onto the train I boarded , alone in the dark night, after it rumbled into the deserted station and reluctantly screeched to a stop. I wandered in through vacant cars smelling of cigarette smoke, train exhaust, a vigorous frozen wind whipping in through the door with me, as I held bag and seat after seat, finding two facing each other to provide a place to put up feet, or turn on one's side and nap for am moment.
      Not a soul to be seen, the train slowly started moving again,  and after a time began hypnotically rocking back and forth as it sped up, then slowed for each small crossing it approached in the midst of the lonely winters night.
      Some time later,  as the huge iron creature straggled its way along the tracks, a quiet looking employee struggled down the aisle , coming to a silent stop by my seat, hip stabilized on the back of a nearby armrest, sold me a ticket with hardly a word, then slowly made his way back to the front of the train, using body weight to roust open the sliding door, the blast of sound from the passage of train down the track bellowing back through the car in waves to where I remained.  I lounged on the old cracked leather seat, alone in the carousing rail car, my cigarette dangling a long ash, my eyes on the moonlit forests that began to swim past. 
     Hours passed, the overhead lights blinking on and off, as I sat  with some e.e.cummings and other favorites, a journal of course,  drawing pencils, a sip now and again to take the edge off of pretending I was without fear or angst at being this young person striking out in the middle of the night.  In the early days of my small life, like many of us in the past and many more to come, here I was asserting that I could do these things, only to find myself collapsing without admitting anything, at the end of each day. 
      I sat there, bumping back and forth in that old train's soothing embrace, watching the sky slowly lighten, the colors gradually making themselves known. We  began passing through all the back yards and backs of businesses and backs of old rotting warehouses and the errant homeless person or the early morning factory worker, who would hurry along in the approaching dawn, strident, with black metal lunchbox under arm, in the approaching January dawn.  
      Sitting up by now, the lives and evidence mounting of so many kinds of existence and circumstance, I was spellbound, as always, observing humans and four footeds. Feeling how the train strained around a corner, until, ultimately restless after all the hours, I felt myself standing  up from the seat, stiffened from the hours in my lone railroad car, then ambled my way down the swaying car  to the awaiting door.
      Using all my slender self to grasp the worn handle, to push my way through as the vast wind plastered me to the side gates, not a soul the wiser if I slipped or fell, it not at the moment or in my life seeming particularly important, I found myself pushing a bit further back, alone in the dawn, to the  back perch,  where behind me fell all the miles and lives and history and events that would come up in everyones days any minute now.