This Thing Called Life (from my morning commute)

Most mornings, for a while now, I go to Salem station. Car or foot, depending upon how my legs are doing. I usually get there early enough to see the 7:29 express come in, but I don't get on; it's usually standing room only. I wait for the 7:34 local, where I always get a seat, and usually with nobody immediately beside me.

Suits my usual habit of writing porn on the train, no?

So I see two trains pull in, as I'm standing on the platform, level with the tracks. One pull out.

This morning, I didn't have to close my eyes as they went by.

This morning, I could watch them like I used to, back when I was commuting by train years ago. Watch the pistons going, feel the roar of the wind, watch the engine chugging by. With that sort of childlike glee. Look, daddy, it's a train!

This morning, I could see the wheels on the tracks without wanting to duck under them.

Between trains, I turned and looked around. It's a cool, crisp morning, breezy, more like Maine than Massachusetts. The inlet nearby was at low tide, and I could catch the smell of saltwater and mudflats, and wonder if there would be clams bubbling the damp sand if I went over. There was a crane working. The big flag on the low flagpole. A playground, right there by the inlet, that I'd never noticed before, with a yellow curly slide. Red and blue caps on the jungle gym.

The 7:34 came in, and the little handful of leftover commuters clambered on.

And we just passed some of the reedy swamp off the tracks in Salem, and there were two swans in the inlet. And then the little white egrets in the salt marsh near Point of Pines.

I think I'm getting a little better.

Or maybe this is just a good morning. I go up and down, some. Monday night was bad, almost like I wasn't on the meds. This morning is good. Etcetera. But.

I could watch the trains.

Unrelated to the last, and not as pleasant

1. Jesus fuck, I have to move in ten days, and I don't even know to where yet. I'm not panicking, precisely. Just about 100% sure that it isn't going to work out, that the people I'm currently waiting to hear back from will blow me off, and I won't be able to find other opportunities because I suck at this and am a general failure at housing stuff, and I'll have to leave illuminaut's and I'll be homeless again. Because that's how my life works.

2. Which is triggered by the moving and cleaning panic because I have to pack most of my stuff up this weekend, because somebody else needs to stay in the guest room. I...settled here. I got too comfortable, forgot it wasn't home. I forgot it was temporary, because my brain simply couldn't bear the thought that I'd be moving again in a month on top of everything else--moved in here just after E. dumped me. Which is hardly an excuse for settling in when I shouldn't have. But. It's why.

3. Nothing could have prepared me for moving my box of magic/altar gear; I nearly started crying just looking at it. The same damn box I packed back in Somerville, when I was first thrown it; it was the first thing I packed, and so carefully. The same box I left at E.'s when I was homeless, kept wishing I could use it more when I was suddenly drawn, so intensely, into magic. Unpacked it in Medford, in a temporary room that proved even more temporary than I thought. Packed it back up again to store at E.'s. Had to go get it when he dumped me. And I haven't touched it since. What's the use? I look at it, it's like any other box of odds and ends. Cryptic and dead.

4. Packed away my battered pocket paperback of the Book of the Law. Bought it in Westborough, when visiting family. It rode around in my pocket for weeks; I'd read it on the bus to work, when I was hurt, or lonely, or tired. It was--solace. I'm not sure that word had much meaning to me until then. And then, tonight, I found it at the bottom of the piles of stuff on my bedside table. There was that comfortable familiarity of having it in my hands; I opened it, read the first few verses, and. Cryptic, frightening, meaningless.

5. Because I'm not strong enough to keep going, in the magic, without someone to share it with. Because I'm not strong enough to keep looking for what is necessary when I have a warm bed and four walls and AC. Because I've managed to pretty much fritter away the summer. Because no matter how good I am, it'll never be good enough.

6. I have to move in ten days. See you all from the gutter, because I'm completely fucking incapable of taking care of myself.