Let it come to you (Books: May)

I catch the train at Penn Station, armed for thirty hours of Southern detour with a book called Sermon on the Mount, described on its back cover as a practical handbook on spirituality, by someone named Emmet Fox. I'd borrowed the book at the suggestion of a Park Slope native who spends all day at the botanic gardens. When she talks about life, she talks about how big it is and how she wants it all.

We roll past Jersey and further south until the sun levels with the train's windows, giving me an excuse to put the book down and take photos with my cellular phone. I do this because I'm making the trip alone but I still want people to know and care about me. I try to think of clever things I might say to caption the photos on Facebook but I'm too tired from three years of law school, from New York, to gracefully insert an image of the blotted-out sun into my friend's lives. Later, I book a table in the diner car and stare at the sun until it's time to eat.

The Amtrak dining car is like a subway ride, except that you get the chance to verify the stories you make up about people in your head because the cultural conventions of long distances require people to talk to you. And, if you've ever seen an Errol Morris documentary, you know that when you let people talk for three minutes without interruption, they'll tell you how crazy they are. I picked at my chicken, wondering how it was cooked, while the woman across from me talked about her boyfriend in Connecticut who was considering a job in Albany, and did I know anything about Albany? It's north of New York, I said. And apartments are probably cheaper than in Brooklyn. She was pretty sure she'd move there for him, if he asked.

Now that I type this, it doesn't seem all that crazy that she'd ask a stranger, even me, for a clue. I spend some part of each day contemplating my own future move. The stakes are low and I'm grateful to the universe for offering me a chance to live and work in a place I'll like, near my family, perhaps with a country home. Still, I mull the decision endlessly, chewing it back and forth, looking for some reason to be dissatisfied, or maybe, looking for a sign that I'm on the right path.

--

It's not easy to sleep in coach seats on Amtrak because the seats don't recline and people who get on in Virginia might get off in North Carolina, and when you're on the train in the middle of the night, it helps to make a call or two to make sure that somebody loves you, so I listen to my neighbors' goodnight honeys and think of who I'd call. I teach myself to gchat from my phone and I'm glad to be rolling along the tracks, sending lower-case sentences back and forth to New York, not totally gone from my friends' lives.

I wake at dawn, grateful that the night is over, and get coffee from the snack car at first call. The attendant doesn't like her job and I don't blame her. It's six a.m. and she's far from home, serving coffee to strangers. Still, I make up some phony justification in my head so that I don't have to tip her. I do this shit all the time and it wears on me. I wish I liked myself better, but I also wish I was a better person. 

I take my coffee to a table and read Sermon. If something spiritual were to happen, it should happen early in the morning, while reading a practical handbook on spirituality. I slog through several chapters, outlining the major themes in my head, trying to memorize key phrases. I break the beatitudes down like the elements of a rule statement. Eventually, other passengers wake up and come for their coffee and a young woman starts a conversation with me about the book, but I answer that I don't know what it's about, which is true. As I say this, I realize that the book wants me to talk to the young woman, to be open to people, to be ready to learn. But I don't feel like it, so I put on my headphones and listen to country radio stations.

We get to Birmingham and take a half-hour station stop. I wander into the station, where I find a vending machine with gummy candy, beef jerkey, and the crackers with orange cheez inside them. I spend all my dollars and then wish I had more dollars for soda. Then, on the way back to the train, people are selling barbecue-- huge Styrofoam shells full of ribs and chicken and sausage. I tell myself that I was guided to the vending machine by a power greater than myself. As I watch people aboard the train enjoying their barbecue, I think to myself, those people look miserable, their hands are so sticky, I definitely made the right decision, I am right right right.

--

The train rolls into New Orleans and I get nerves from the new city-- the fear that I won't understand how transportation works and that I'll give all my money to a cab driver. This is exactly what happens. I say my address to the cab driver, but I try to give some directions to show him that I know where I'm going. He asks me if I'm headed home and I say no, but then I lie and tell him that I'm here a lot. Later, when we're lost and I'm no help, he asks me why I said I knew where we were going.

--

I'm back in Park Slope and my full-of-life friend asks me how I liked Sermon, whether the beatitudes moved me. I can recall exactly two of them, systematically stored somewhere between real property law and torts. I don't pretend that the book moved me and I'm glad for that.

This is supposed to wrap itself up with an intersection of fact and faith, maybe some figurative language about the train. A block quote from Sermon would do. Instead, I'll give you this:

I'm glad that I don't to have go anywhere to be happy, mostly because happy isn't the goal. You can move forward, but there's not going to be a sign in the sky that says you're on the right track. Borrowing the book from a friend, trying to understand it, taking pictures with your cellular phone-- all of this is good enough.