Waiting on the storm

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Thunderstorms are predicted for today when I know for certain I will have to be outside in a space so wide open I’ll be among the tallest things on the horizon.

We live in uncomfortable times with questionable choices, not just which candidate to vote in as president, but in the every day things that make life bearable, whether to bring a rain coat, an umbrella or body armor.

Trump’s comments about the Second Amendment yesterday incited a near riot among Clinton supporters, when he told his audience Clinton would kill off the Second Amendment if allowed to appoint Supreme Court justices and that Second Amendment supporters had no options to stop her – or maybe they did.

Clinton people said this was a call to have someone try to assassinate Clinton; Trump claimed he simply referred to the political backlash that would result if she did get the appointments she needed. Considering Trump’s history for inciting violence, I’m positive he didn’t mean to rile up a “well-regulated militia” in defense of the Second Amendment.

These days, I take the light rail since the second stop is only two blocks from my house and the trip to Bayonne takes roughly the same amount of time as when I drove.

While I could have used this mode of transportation sooner, it was not practical while I worked a beat in Bayonne, or while I still lived in Jersey City. I would have had to drive or walk to the 9^th street station and getting on the light rail at 9^th Street is a nightmare, since it is the primary stop for the upperly mobile in their journey wall street or the jersey city waterfront – making mockery of the old comparison of sardines pressed together.
While I still have to deal with these sardines, moving to 45^th Street in Union City allows me to access the line long before the hordes of greedy do, and thus guarantee myself a seat all the way through Hoboken and Jersey City. I get off at Liberty State Park for the change to the Bayonne train.

I also discovered that with the exception of Journal Square, I can access nearly every place I need to cover for the newspaper, and thus do not have to suffer the indignity of finding a park spot or getting a ticket when I overstay my welcome in some posh neighborhood downtown.

This trip reminds me of those days in the early 1970s when I took a bus to work and back each day, traveling from Montclair to Fairfield and back, a regular commuter who had not yet become addicted to the convenience of a car.

I guess I’m not too old to learn a new trick especially when it really is an old trick re-imagined.

Over the last few weeks I have been scanning my old novel manuscripts and journals, traveling back in time to those days when I was far less confident that my life would turn out well.

While some of these journals were typewritten or done on Atari computer, most are handwritten, and in re-keying these I am forced to relive some of the most painful moments of my life, and the lessons learned.

I read Faulkner on the light rail and have come to realize how much I owe him for my vision and how I write. I keep thinking of the professor who once compared me to Faulkner, but only now begin to understand why – style if not content.

Today, I’ll take a slightly different route, journeying to a park off the Garfield Avenue station, a place so flat you can actually see the sky, and the approach of storms. Today, I wait for the thunder and lightning, just we all wait for the outcome of an election in which we all are losers irregardless of who wins – Clinton painting Trump as some kind of monster, and the media falling into lock step behind her.

There is no truth in such storms, only a lot of wind, lightning, and illusion.