is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Training.
On Amtrak recently, I ended up sitting in one of the regular cars (i.e., not the quiet car), and man was it loud. But it wasn�t businessmen on their cellphones (i.e., I wasn�t on the Acela high speed line)�it was dopes talking to dopes. Now, let us all admit that other people sound like idiots 80% of the time, when you overhear their random public conversations. Myself included, I�m sure. There is joy in talking about nothing sometimes, and that�s OK. Much of what gets communicated between people isn�t in the content of the words anyway. So that we�ve established.
But behind me? There were these two girls talking about their weekend of partying, and how they had to go take math tests now, and �why do I have to have responsibilities?� and so on. And then girl1 starts talking to girl2 about this guy she�s �dating,� �but it�s not like she loves him,� who wants her to talk dirty to him but she thinks it�s disgusting. Girl2 says, �really?� Girl1�s all, �wait, do YOU talk dirty sometimes?� Girl2�s like, �sure, it can be fun.� Then girl1 feels 1upped. So she starts begging girl2 to tell her what to say to her guy �that she doesn�t even love� when he wants her to talk dirty. Apparently she likes to party and fuck but has not quite enough imagination to describe or request anything dirty about fucking. Or perhaps she just doesn�t like to think of it that way�totally fine. Girl2 says so, to her credit. Girl2 says, �if you can�t think of anything to say, say what you do think.� Girl1 keeps harassing her to tell her what to say. Girl2 refuses. This goes on for some time. Everyone around me on the car is visibly annoyed, some are more disturbed than annoyed. Girl2 keeps saying no No NO and so on, and then finally says, �none of these people around here need to hear that stuff,� and Girl1 begins to say no one is listening but is cut off by me saying, in my outdoors voice, �No. No we really don�t.� I get some laughter and a thumbs up from fellow patrons. And the girls lapse into silence. Girl2 puts on her headphones and listens to music. Girl1 takes out her cellphone and calls a friend. Turns out that friend just learned that the guy she�s been dating for a whole year has also been in couples counseling the whole time with his wife to save his marriage.
It is hard to be young.
In other news, lately, since I am on trains more often than the average person, whenever I hear a conversation going on behind me, I try to picture in as much detail as I can exactly what the conversers might look like. I am always hoping that what I imagine will be so far off that I�ll be both amused by the disjunction and smacked down by my own presumption that I could judge a person�s appearance from the sound of his or her voice. And yet, so far I have always been so uncannily on target that it�s slightly scary.
Girl1 and Girl2 were late teens/early 20s, caucasian, straight/blown-out hair (one blonde, two brunette), a bit too much makeup such that they�d be prettier with less, but not prettier with none, tight jeans and t-shirts, maybe some muffin top hanging out, sweatshirt or small cotton jacket that doesn�t seem quite warm enough for the weather, slack-jawed �I am judging you� looks on their faces that barely mask the fear that they are being judged, and all the tenseness parading as langour that comes along with feeling so certain and so uncertain at the same time. Just like that.
The dude behind me on the Acela service a few days later, the one who was coming up with a business plan, but who could not articulate a coherent thought in an intelligent-sounding sentence no matter what you promised him in exchange, and who has relied throughout his life in New Jersey on getting jobs from family members, he was thick. Thick neck. Thick nose. Thick torso. Dense. Blonde hair cropped too close so it looks like part of his skull, except on top where it�s a bit longer. The kind of face that does not �do� facial expressions. (Bruce Willis has three facial expressions. This guy has one.) Hoodie sweatshirt, long shorts, flip flops. And he�s on his way to a business meeting with a ham-fisted plan. But it�s OK, because the guy is a friend of his uncle.
I try to stick to the quiet car, but sometimes it�s full. They need more quiet cars, because a quiet car is such a lovely thing. I�ve asked myself why it is so lovely, and I think it is not just because I do love silence. It�s because the social condition of the quiet car forces everyone to think about their own conduct, to judge themselves as having effects on other people, and modify their behavior accordingly. I mean, sometimes when I�m on the quiet car I realize that I�d like to listen to my iPod or make a short phone call, but I shouldn�t, because I�m on the quiet car. I can wait. It�s a lovely little space of ethical deliberation, and usually people do not let you down in it. (And, if anyone steps out of line, there is always some other enforcer-type passenger in the car who will do some officious shushing, or explain that �this is the quiet car.�)
It�s funny, though, how it switches some rules around, such that if you say only the bare minimum to someone who tries to strike up a conversation with you on the quiet car, you are not the one being rude. There are at many, many other cars where a person can go make friends or talk on the phone.
So I try to stick to the quiet car. Some people don�t want silence or ethics from their train ride. And sometimes segregation, when it is chosen on all sides, is OK, right? (That is a real question.)
10:47 a.m. - April 15, 2009
Vladimir Estragon - 2009-04-16 02:33:12
Of course it's ok. I read an article recently about inmates of a penitentiary (in California, I think) who were protesting the forced integration of African-American and Latino prisoners. Considering that most of these prisoners belong to ethnic-oriented gangs, putting them together in the same cell block results in almost constant violence. To the people governing the prison, however, creating a separate Latino cell block and an African-American cell block just wouldn't be correct.
As to the segregation policies on Amtrak, I would not be at all surprised to find out that before the implementation of the quiet cars, incidents of violence against the types of people you describe in your post were much more frequent.
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