Study Waugh No More Friday, December 05, 2003

Four days without a post. I've spent most of them editing stories and reading Evelyn Waugh. I'm at the end of the novels now, which depresses me. Waugh is one of the few serious writers I've read all the way through, and the thought of no more Basil Seal or Margot Metroland or Peter Pastmaster is depressing. Those guys being the cast of characters he used in most of his books, at least as background; he gives them a nice little wrap-up in a short story, which shows the Bright Young Things of the 20s and 30s arthritic and impotent in the 60s. But still cunning. Always cunning.

What else? Hard to say. Finally got around to listening to Warren Zevon's final record. It's funny, sweet and professional top to bottom. I'm not sure it would be a must-have if it didn't have the story behind it. As it is, though, it's a heartbreaker, particularly the last song.

Later...

@ 8:40:00 AM, ,

Steam Trains to the Milky Way Monday, December 01, 2003

Took the PATH to work today. The PATH, for anyone who lives outside the protective domes that cover much of the Northeast, is a subway that runs from Newark and Hoboken to Manhattan. When I moved to Jersey I'd take the light rail to the PATH station at Exchange Place, a spit of dock on the Hudson, and motor downtown. Then there was that trouble with the planes.

The station downtown didn't reopen till last week. Mrs. WTJ went there just after, and found herself getting choked up. At first, I actually felt excited by all of it: There was the big staircase at Exchange Place that I used to take two steps at a time...the dopey outsider-art mural of the Battle of Paulus Hook...the entranceway that positions you right in the middle of the train, where it's the most crowded. Had I started to forget all that stuff? After just a few months?

The train ended up in daylight. The last leg of the tunnel isn't closed over, so you find yourself looking out on the pit that used to be the WTC. Lots of mud and concrete and giant spools of wire. The train platform is shielded, a little, by big banners with blurbs about New York by famous people, all of the "If I can make it here..." variety. Looking out onto a pit, and the poorly run city above, it seemed like protesting too much.

It didn't move me much, maybe because I've been working with a bird's eye view of the site for nine months, and chugging past it every time I go shopping. Even the stairs were more disconcerting than anything: The new station preserves the original staircase that led from the platforms to the shopping concourse of the WTC. Now they open onto a big, undistinguished white space, like a Mall of the Future.

What finally got me was the fat man. I've written about him before, long ago: A big guy I see huffing to make the ferry every morning as I'm coming off it. Today I saw him coming down the stairs to Liberty Street as I headed up them. I couldn't figure why I was seeing him there, why he wasn't heading for the boat, and then I realized: The train is back, so he's taking it from now on. Life, in this one little way, is the way it used to be.

Blammo. That was a biggie. I'm still trying to figure out what it means.

@ 9:05:00 AM, ,