Once upon a time I started writing a book. I was living in Los Angeles and commuting to work each day by train. I wrote about the people and experiences on the train. What I observed, the sights and sometimes even the smells. I wrote about the people I met, and those I didn’t meet. And then my computer crashed.
I never truly lost all of it, because it’s always been deep within the memory banks of my brain. I didn’t have the slightest idea on how to get it published as a book, but I have figured out how to create a blog. So welcome to the first posting of Cecelia on The Train.
Fast forward about 400 miles north from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area and a few years after the original thought of a train book. I find myself sitting here on a BART train. BART is short for Bay Area Rapid Transit, one of the areas main mass transportation services. Its mid afternoon, too early for the nightly commute but the train isn’t completely empty either.
I notice three people who have just boarded the train together. It appears to be a father and his two kids. His daughter is about 14 and looks like she would rather be anywhere else in the world right now except for on this train with her dad and her younger brother. She has her IPod on, using it as a distraction to help her ignore the fact that she is with her family. Dad is lost in his newspaper and doesn’t see the angst on his daughter’s face. I notice it, along with the fact that I would have given my right arm to be allowed to wear make up when I was her age the way she is, not exactly Goth, but not far from it. A Stylish Goth look if that’s possible. She closes her eyes and looses herself to her music. I highly doubt that its opera she’s listening to. Her eyes won’t open again till they reach their stop. Dad won't put down his newspaper till they reach stop.
My attention focuses on her brother who is about 10 years old. Like me, he is checking out everyone on the train, almost to the point of him staring. He looks over at me and I look away and lower my gaze. I look up again and he is still looking at me. I worry for a minute that I have might have something in my teeth or that my shirt is buttoned wrong. His focus doesn’t stay on me but goes one by one every person on the train. I watch him and I realize that he is probably doing the same thing I am, creating his own stories about the people on the train.
