I am on the train and thinking about talking to someone else on the train. (That sounds like the teasing beginning to a game of Twenty Questions: Guess who I am thinking of!)
I'm considering breaking the commuter code of silence because I heard a story on NPR this morning that public transit commuters who talk to other commuters are happier than those who sit in their safe, self-contained world, reading or looking at their smartphones. If NPR reported it, it must be true (and witty and intelligent), so like a good acolyte, I'm doing what they told me to.
(You can read this story for yourself here. My favorite part is where they say that "even for introverts, silence is leaving you sadder." I'm tempted to take that as a challenge: I will not be sadder by not having to talk to other people, just watch me.)
I've been riding the same train for a year-and-a-half—the same car, even. We are creatures of habit: Just as in school when we're allowed to choose our own seat every day and we, after only a few classes, gravitate toward the same seat with territorial fervor, commuters stick with the car and the seat that they know.
Why do we so easily and willingly—gratefully, almost—slip into routine in these small, quotidian ways? I think we are made to find order, and we take joy in ordering the same coffee from the same person. We like sitting down in "our" seat and seeing familiar faces around us. The world is unpredictable, but we make small choices every day to make it feel ever-so-slightly more predictable.
Part of the predictability of my commute is that no one talks. There's a man who works the crossword every day, and behind him is a guy who immediately falls asleep after settling in to his seat. How does he do this? I want to know how restful that sleep is and if he every considered going to bed earlier to avoid the need to sleep more in such a very public place. But it's hard to ask him questions, seeing as he's sleeping, so I'm stuck with my wonderings.
Usually there's an older couple sitting in front of me. They're in their 60s: the man gray-haired and bearded and the woman with a rich blonde that I'm sure is dyed but it looks so natural. Her hair is styled, every day, as if she were Hayley Mills in that show Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Do you know what I'm talking about? It was the precursor to Saved by the Bell, and if you're still a little bit lost (or would like a trip down memory lane), here's a picture of Miss Bliss:
Over the last year-and-a-half, I have invented an entire life for this couple. He's often typing away at what is clearly a scientific abstract, so I made him an epidemiologist at Northwestern, working determinedly in his lab to find the cure for everything. I imagine him travelling around the world to medical conferences to report his findings in PowerPoint talks that are standing room only. His work is that crucial, and his presentations are that engaging.
She's often reading—The New Yorker or a novel—and I believe she's a librarian and is known for her knack of recommending just the perfect book for someone, even if it's in a genre they wouldn't normally read. You can tell her one book you like, one movie you've seen recently, and how you feel about one current even she asks about, and before you're even done answering, you'll receive a book title on one of those little pieces of scrap paper the library has everywhere. A handpicked book: It's practically magical.
When this couple, several months back, spent their train rides looking at decorating websites and discussing in low tones how hardwood is a must because it's so classic and inviting (when there are plush rugs especially, she added), I invented for them a second home in Paris. Their pied a terre is their retirement dream, a goal they've both kept in mind through hours and hours in the lab and in the stacks.
And now it was finally coming true! I was so happy for them, even though I'd never technically spoken to them, but then, two weeks before Thanksgiving, my train friends disappeared.
At first I thought that perhaps they had taken an early Thanksgiving holiday. I'm sure they have children to visit in New York City (of course they enjoy the theatre and all the restaurants) or Napa Valley or Tuscany (apparently I think their children really like wine). But then they didn't come back after Thanksgiving, and now it's been almost a whole week after the rest of my silent commuter friends have returned.
Where are you? I ask their seat every day. I worry about my train friends I don't even know, and now I realize that if I were one of those happy commuters who talked—instead of consuming book after book—I would know, and I wouldn't be so sad as I look at their empty seat.
To console myself, I'm going to believe that they have escaped to that pied a terre in Paris. They're planning on spending the holidays in France because there's just something so right and charming about seeing the City of Lights in twinkle lights. When they come back in January, I'll be sure to ask them how it was.
Over the weekend, I took a little retreat from my normal life, or as I like to refer to it: I ran away from home for a night. It's so much more satisfying, by the way, to run away from home when you're old enough to drive.
I brought Miss Daisy the Pug with me to go camping at the Richard Bong Recreation Area near Kenosha, Wisconsin. I picked that because 1) it was the first thing that turned up with I googled "camping near Kenosha" that wasn't an RV store, 2) it was just an hour and 20 minutes away, and 3) I could reserve a campsite with just a few days' notice. All these campgrounds in Illinois, you have to reserve a week in advance, or of course, you can risk it and just show up.
Risking it is not in my genetic make-up, and if I'm going to drive an hour+ after packing a car of camping supplies, I would like to be darn sure that will be a campsite with my name on it at the other end.
So to Wisconsin I went, where they allow for my level of spontaneity: you can make reservations with 3 days' notice and feel assured of your "spur-of-the-moment" planning.
It was such a good decision.
I've never done the solo camping thing, although I am well-equipped for it. By that I mean that I have all the stuff necessary, but I also mean that I have the personality necessary. I told a few people at work on Friday what I was doing, and I received mostly comments of awe that I would dare to do that.
"Won't you be scared?"
"But it's so dark!"
"Who will you talk to?"
"What if you have a problem?!?"
"Are you going to pretend to be Thoreau and come back with your journals to publish? Are you going to talk exclusively about living deliberately when you come back on Monday?"
But all I kept thinking—ever since I made the reservation—was, "I can feel my soul expanding with this possibility of being so far away from my normal life." {No offense to all the people in my normal life.}
My introvert self was very much made for solo camping trips, and thanks to my parents, who began outfitting me with camping equipment when I was still quite young, I have everything I need to run away from home and pitch a tent and cook over a grill and pump my own water out of a spigot that looks like it's been there since Laura Ingalls Wilder was alive.
I love camping for many reasons, and it's one of the continual joys of my life that my parents raised me on a foundation of outdoorsy-ness. {It's such a joy that I've even written about it before when I was flying over the desert on the way to Las Vegas.}
I love camping now because it reminds me of growing up, and I can't set foot in a campground without remembering the hundreds of other campgrounds I've been in {all blending into a generalized one, of course, with a mish-mash of red rocks, mountain streams, and tall trees that always smell sweet in the morning air}.
I think about how my sister and I used to spend hours (it seemed) riding the loops of various campgrounds on our bikes. We'd read for awhile, bike for awhile, volunteer to go get water, set up our own steeplechase course {hey, you see what sorts of activities you come up with when you are so far from humanity that you start to think it's normal to shower just once a week}.
And in the evenings, our whole family would sometimes take long bike rides around whatever national park or state park we were in before settling in to play Hearts or study the stars. {All those star lessons, and all I can pick out with any confidence is Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Big Dipper.}
So I love camping for that nostalgic reason—but I also love it because it pares you down to the essential. Everything—from boiling water to cooking breakfast—takes longer than you ever budget for in your regular life, and there's a quiet beauty in saying: I would like coffee, but it's going to be a little while. Delayed pleasure and all that.
Your day essentially becomes about the survival tasks, and so instead of running from activity to activity, you take your time and focus on where you are. I am scrambling eggs over a grill. I am boiling water to clean the skillet. I am doing the crossword while drinking coffee.
I think that's what I needed when I ran away from home: to be present where I am. There is nothing else in a campground to distract me, unlike at home where I could always be cleaning a bathroom or organizing recipes or re-doing my budget. There's always some task to be done, but in a campground, I cannot do any of that.
I cannot clean the bathroom; it's a pit toilet and the thought of cleaning that is something to avoid contemplating for very long.
I cannot do laundry; I wear the same clothes for several days.
I cannot see friends; they are over an hour away back home.
When I was camping, it was just me and my little pug surrounded by trees and a soft dampness to the air that helps you remember that life is more than running from one thing to the next.
And as a bonus, when camping alone with a pug, you get to see faces like this all the time—faces that say, "But I thought we lived inside!"
It's a sign.
On Labor Day, I was in the shower, luxuriating in a schedule that allowed for a midday shower. That morning, I'd read the entire paper*, worked the crossword, journalled, and made a low-pressure to-do list for the day.
It was so low pressure that I'd called it "Labor Day Thoughts." Just some ideas, some passing fancies that might catch my eye during the day.
Sometimes I divide my to-do lists into MUST DOs and NICE TO DOs—this helps me sort and prioritize and avoid that to-do list overload {when you think, 'If I wrote it down, I have to do it, if only for the satisfaction of crossing it off.' This is terrible logic and is slightly akin to the logic of 'If I read it on the Internet, it must be true.'}.
But even that divided to-do list felt too pressured for a day like Labor Day, the last hurrah of the summer. Summer itself is supposed to be low pressure: long meals on the balcony on long, humid evenings, long runs in the the early morning relative cool, long walks with friends, long afternoons reading in the sun.
The last thing Labor Day needed was a long to-do list, so I had my Labor Day Thoughts. Showering was one {and something I could definitely achieve during the day}, so after lunch of leftover eggplant gratin, I was in the shower, thinking a little bit about my love of to-do lists and projects, a little bit of my schedule for the week, and a little bit of how I wish it were fall already.
While shaving my legs, I was thinking about a possible fall project {note: someone who loves to-do lists, projects, and schedules will definitely have seasonal projects}: sprucing up my bathroom.
Maybe some paint? Maybe update the shower, which has frosted glass sliding doors and cream tiles from when the condo was built?
Maybe some earth-tone tiles in the shower like in the bathroom at the Pines Lodge in Beaver Creek, Colorado? {When thinking about updating your home, by the way, it's always entirely realistic to plan to mimic fancy ski lodges that market themselves as a "luxury resort." Man, my demonstrations of logic today are way off; you might be very concerned about my thinking abilities. If I followed this Pines Lodge plan, I would need to have soap shaped like little rocks and fluffy robes out for every guest.}
It was just the beginning of thinking about this bathroom plan, and at that moment, with the razor poised over my knee, my vanity mirror fell off the wall, crashed into the sink, knocked over everything on the vanity, and then crashed to the floor, smashing a bottle of Tresor {this perfume I used to wear} in the process.
It's a sign. It must be a sign. It's as if the vanity mirror was saying, "Take me now! I don't want to be here anymore! Fix this bathroom!"
And that is how I decided to re-do my bathroom.
In related news: How long do you think my bathroom will smell like Tresor? Feel free to place bets.
*"Entire" meaning "all the parts I was interested in." Sorry, Sports section; I don't think you're part of the whole paper, but I did glance at you.
Yesterday, my iPod was on shuffle as I sat in the armchair I got at a garage sale and did the Sunday crossword.
I will let you think it was the New York Times Sunday crossword.
Mixed in with musicals and French music on my iPod is a lot of folk and a little country. The Dixie Chicks came on—and even though I have heard their songs hundreds of times and listening to them takes me back to high school and early college—I stopped the crossword and listened like it was the first time.
They sang:
We're afraid to be idle
So we fill up the days
Run on the treadmill
Keep slaving away
I was trying to be idle yesterday. Doing the crossword, taking time to cook a slightly fancy lunch, taking a long walk with my little pug. I was trying, but I still felt restless.
So I put down the crossword, hit repeat on the iPod, and sat. I just sat. I was idle.
