New Jersey Transit (b. 1979)
Offline, 2023
Malfunction on LCD and reality
Fuck you gift of the artist
Tag: not new york
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and never trust a heart that is so bent it can’t break.
It’s been a while. I’ve had a lot to say but not a lot of words, if that makes any sense. Summer began and passed and here we are almost at the cusp of school starting. I’m not sure if I have much to show for it other than work hours logged, a few good books read, and some intensive therapy – and I’m transparent about that one because these things need to be more at the forefront of conversation. Humans can be fragile and strong at the same time. I used to think that it was a balance but these days I feel that it is a composite, for there is strength in fragility and, conversely, strength can be fragile.
I am sitting with a beer at SEA-TAC, waiting for my red eye flight home. Four hours ago I was in California hugging Sid for the first time in almost two months and then navigating a flimsy rental car through a canyon of giant flood puddles and mudslides and rocks and pretending that I could see the road on the 405. Apparently there was an earthquake in Ojai around the time that my first flight took off. Seattle is sunny and warm and full of forest fire smoke. I don’t think it’s dramatic to say that the world is upside down.
This has been the summer of hard feelings – encountering them, acknowledging them, facing them, feeling them. I’ve never been good at any of that. I have always felt things deeply but received a D- in the processing department. If anything, I will complete this summer with a degree in feelings. Take that, Harvard.
I’m not even sure what highway I was on this morning – maybe 14 – en route to the 405, hustling to try and get ahead of the flooding and feeling guilty for not spending the full allotted four hours with my kiddo, but also cognizant of the fact that if I missed my flight, I wouldn’t be home until at least Tuesday. I’d spent the night in a random hotel, blackout drapes drawn, diving into and surfacing from intense dreams that left me covered in sweat, shaking so hard that I thought I would be sick. The rain barreled down onto the road, so much so that the car sensor registered that I had crashed the front. It kept dinging and flashing for a good half hour, the camera obstructed by sheets of water. Every so often, the car would lift with a surge, and I’d grasp the steering wheel tighter, training every thought on the lyrics of Bright Eyes songs that I’d set up to play, album by album, from my phone.
The rain reminded me of a trip my husband and I took to Turkey shortly after we were married. We drove from Izmir to Cappadocia, stopping in various towns and cities along the way, and at one point we were driving up a mountain behind an oil truck that was moving exceedingly slow. When it finally let us pass, our car was pelted with hail, and we realized quickly that the slowness and largess of the truck had been shielding us from the harsh reality of our future. When this memory hit, tears ran freely down my cheeks. I wasn’t making a sound, but the physicality of the emotions surfaced.
Much of this summer has been acknowledging the fact that I have been using life like that oil tanker, the feelings like hail just out of view. At some point that truck is going to pull over and the natural elements will reach you. So, here I am with a lot of dents and scratches. I think the hail has gotten smaller, though sometimes the smallest balls of ice sting the most.
In other news, Sid has been connecting with farm animals, and one of the chickens is named Patricia.
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my eyes are blurred, the clock is ticking
The matrix of protective film that covers the rear window of hospital transport pixelates. From my bench seat inside, I feel the warmth of the setting sun weaken as we drive east. We have been awake for days, us adults, grasping at short sighs of slumber when we have moments to breathe. I gaze out the window, the view obscured by the privacy pattern, turning the highway and cars into blurs. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve forgotten my glasses.
Facing backward, I can only see what has already passed. The drab interstate scenery seems to speed in reverse while the vehicle hurtles forward. Traffic noses up to us and then slides swiftly around. I see hundreds of people making their way somewhere, moving toward us, surpassing us. This is what time is like these days. A solitary stasis.
I have always been good with landmarks. As a child, I knew the roads by feel. My eyes closed, curled in the back seat, I knew the curve of Crystal Brook Hollow, the dip down and twist of Old Post. I knew the acceleration when the main road morphed into the parkway, the jolt of brakes when traffic clumped at the border of Queens. During my time in the city, I could run thirteen miles through Brooklyn in the dark morning, primarily based on feel, sound, smell, and the sense of sidewalk changes beneath my feet.
I have no idea where we are. We have lived in this state for ten years, and I have never bothered to learn what highway gets us where except for the one that takes me back to the city. I have hidden beneath the ease of GPS. Just tell me where to go, and I will get there. I never stopped to think that perhaps one day I’d sit backward in a transport vehicle, the future very much unknown, and yearn to know one solitary landmark, something, anything, to tell me where everyone was going and, more importantly, where the two of us in this truck will land.
My child picks Car Seat Headrest as our driving music. Actually, they chose “Midwest emo,” and having little to no idea what that micro-genre was, I chose the first thing I found on my phone. The sound echoes ethereally through the ambulance bay. The sun has disappeared behind the asphalt New Jersey horizon, buried beneath the dusk and trucks and cars. We pull off somewhere, some road that leads to another, and the lyrics weave their way through my heavy head.
I thought one day
I thought I'd find a hole
In my own backyard
I’d never seen before
Follow it down
Underneath that fence
Come back up on the other side
Live another life
The transport stops beneath the fluorescent lights of a loading dock. There is a strange relief in knowing that this part of the journey has ended. We have reached a terminus for the moment, temporary, a vague temporal, but a place to rest. For now.
I open the door to fill out paperwork. On the sidewalk, half in darkness, there is a peacock. It screams a strange hello and sends its feathers out full and flush. Once the surprise lessens, I pause in the reality of the moment – the beauty, the absurdity, the flash of the unexpected.
object of memory 