Friday Night Whine Fest; Or, Trainspiration

Have I told you that my commute is approximately 1.5 hours door to door? It's likely you've been made privy to this thrilling information because it seems like I can talk of nothing else. It's unlikely you've heard because oh, right, I never post.

My sorry excuse is that working+commuting+sleeping is not the perfect formula for inspiration or creativity. I may be inspired to, say, elbow somebody on the train in the teeth for letting their mouth hang open to release -- like rot in a tupperware long-forgotten in the back of the fridge -- their clammy, oven-baked morning breath. Don't they know the train is an enclosed, poorly ventilated can in which the air does not filter but rather hangs in thick sickly clouds of stench? Don't they know they have nostrils? Don't they know I have nostrils?

I may be inspired to squeeze tears out my bloodshot, I-woke-up-at-5:30am eyes. Tears my nose pushes up in protest of being too near what can only be described as sweaty human body crevices. (A phrase thinked up by none other than my brilliantly scornful sister). Tears of self-pity too for, well, obvious reasons.

I may be inspired to bow my head in resignation and trace my eyes over word after word on pages of worlds that are not a bleak screaming train with stained blue upholstery. Worlds that are light and open and make me feel like I'm breathing something more than oxygen.

I may be inspired to let myself have music, to surrender to, say, Arcade Fire the whole hour. To let my brain lift and dissolve into nothing but stars and clapping and harmony and orchestra. To look out the window and open myself up to the lights, to the world outside the train. I may be inspired to see that the great looming machinery, the many metal shades of gray and brown, the plumes of thick smoke twisting like flower stems into the sky -- that with the right music in my head, it's beautiful. (I'm telling you - listen to Arcade Fire.)

I may be inspired to stare at the heads and shoulders, the clenched jaws and watching eyes, the people who wait. Every day. Just, wait. Like this train ride is a pause, a time when the world moves, but they are still. Still and surrounded by hundreds of others squished in next to them, just trying to live. I may be inspired to hold my breath and thank the sky that I am mixed in with humanity, right where I want to be.

But am I ever inspired to write? Not so much.