June 11 - Excess Liminality

You marvel.

I lean, the barely-air-conditioned heat of the train car washing over me. My exposed skin prickles with a glisten of sweat (hardly a sheen, really), with the rest of me more insulated from the whims of the air currents.

But you sit there, your shoulder slumped against the strange plastic wall, your collar braced against the fake-pleather seat that is just too short for you. You look out the window, and you marvel. You marvel at the strange industrial district, the repetitive suburban housing, the edges of a city rife with expression. You marvel at a junkyard, scrap metal heaped more than a story high, a tank full of NON-POTABLE WATER always in clear view. You marvel at small fields of tall grass, unkempt with nobody to make them respectable; you find them more beautiful that way. You marvel at pylons, at shacks, at bridges, at high school stadia.

It isn’t on the train for long. On the longest days, forty minutes. Thirty minutes, usually. It stares out the window, taking it in; though its attention is usually focused elsewhere. A book, on a good day; a particularly useless bunch of youtube videos, on the worse ones.

The train arrives at the station, and the passengers disembark. They have places to be.