Home again.
Friday afternoon. I’m waiting in the train station with half the Jewish population of Yale. The other half is already on the 1 o’clock train to New York. They’re the half that got the taxis. The half here is on their cells, calling home, and complaining how the taxi company screwed them and so they missed the 12:59. The half here is enjoying the irony of running down Science Hill from physics to stand waiting for the cab they called half an hour earlier. This is exactly what Yom Kippur feels like. The rush to get to peace on time. The craziness inspired by torn stockings, wrong ties, missing subways or not catching a cab to atonement. Usually the fury begins at five as we scramble through the obstacle course. I started early this year with the anxiousness to make my afternoon train back to the city. The frustrations of travel are an integral part of the holiday. They offset the calm ritual and peace of Temple. It’s a transitory peace - while standing my mind races around the text trying to see what’s on the other side of it, struggling to understand it from an angle I am comfortable coming from. Going back to where I come from right now.
The train board is changing over. It’s not digital but the old kind where the destinations, times, and tracks flip with a satisfying clicking noise. The board rapidly rotates through all the possibilities of places and hours before settling on the most stable conformation, the established schedule. Going to fit into it and board my train.
Train now. Riding backwards, watching the still green trees unfold and blur away. Looking forwards, sleep for the sleepless is coming. If only I can close my eyes, let go of words, and drift dreaming to New York.
Train again. Saturday evening. After choreographed operatic experience of Temple, welcome of home, and two birthday cakes. One was built of breakfast. It was a stack of pancakes, sugar coated and frosted with sour cream and love. Being home there’s a nostalgia for the time when Sam lived here, four of us regularly round the dinner table, reciting the familiar and funny lines of our family dialogue. I love the luxury of being able to go train to subway to Spring Street, smell of Ceci-Cela croissants and joy of some of my favorite people happy to see me. I love riding almost full moon side forwards into Saturday night at school and my twentieth year. Going where to go.
The train board is changing over. It’s not digital but the old kind where the destinations, times, and tracks flip with a satisfying clicking noise. The board rapidly rotates through all the possibilities of places and hours before settling on the most stable conformation, the established schedule. Going to fit into it and board my train.
Train now. Riding backwards, watching the still green trees unfold and blur away. Looking forwards, sleep for the sleepless is coming. If only I can close my eyes, let go of words, and drift dreaming to New York.
Train again. Saturday evening. After choreographed operatic experience of Temple, welcome of home, and two birthday cakes. One was built of breakfast. It was a stack of pancakes, sugar coated and frosted with sour cream and love. Being home there’s a nostalgia for the time when Sam lived here, four of us regularly round the dinner table, reciting the familiar and funny lines of our family dialogue. I love the luxury of being able to go train to subway to Spring Street, smell of Ceci-Cela croissants and joy of some of my favorite people happy to see me. I love riding almost full moon side forwards into Saturday night at school and my twentieth year. Going where to go.
