T Party

Two brief accounts of recent experiences with the T*:

Friday night
Jeremy and I planned to go to Mobius for the first ever U.S. performance/reading by Ivan "Magor" Jirous, a Czech underground poet and philosopher who's been around the block a few times. We got a late start because of a good meal, but managed to catch the right Red Line train at North Quincy. (I almost always plan out my trips ahead of time on Google Maps now - it has all the bus and train schedules and gives pretty accurate routes.) So we were good to go....

Until we got to JFK, where there was a delay. (This song gets stuck in my head often.) It lasted 30 minutes, before we rolled on... then stopped at Andrew. We got out to check the bus schedule, but had missed the last CT3 bus. So back on the train, which, after 20 minutes, made its way to Broadway, before stopping again. After getting off there, we found that we had just missed the #47 bus as well. But also, had we taken the #18 (or one of those buses at Andrew), we could still have made it to Mobius, arriving a half hour late, and thus making it worthwhile. But we didn't, and now it was too late. So, giving up, we headed back down the Broadway stairs to go back to Quincy - only to get stuck behind these two knuckleheads descending painfully slowly with the bow-legged gaits of drunkards - just as a Braintree train pulled in and out of the station. So then it was another half hour until the next one. The two slow crabs in front of us also had to wait for the next Braintree train, but they soon got all jazzed up on coke (the illicit kind), which, had they done so earlier, may have caused them to actually catch the original train. At least I learned a lot about Broadway station, thanks to Jeremy's history as a Red Line driver.

We later found out the long delay was due to not one, but two disabled trains, the second being brought out solely to rescue the first, before crapping out as well. But if there's a moral to the story... I think about all the times I barely catch a bus, or manage to get somewhere just in time, or otherwise get lucky in my daily travels; and then there are days like this, where everything goes wrong. It's bound to happen some times, even all at once. I really can't complain, you know?

Saturday night
Wasn't planning on doing much, other than making it through the Die Hard series and watching the Bruins, but we decided - and this is again due to Jeremy's connections with the Red Line - to head to the Red Line holiday party, at a VFW hall in Randolph. About an hour and several phone calls and texts later, we finally figured it out that the party was at a Knights of Columbus hall in Canton (or an Elks Lodge in Stoughton? We tried so many permutations that I can't remember exactly what it was), but delays and wrong directions are not the point of this story.

This is the second Red Line holiday party I've been to, and I don't ever want to miss one again. Consistently - both in the two I've been to, and among the attendants in each - I've noticed a unique and sustained joy that I can't immediately ascribe to any other social function, than that of a Red Line party. First of all, there was food there - cold cuts, deviled eggs, cookies - and that's enough for me anywhere. But there was more... so many smiling faces, so much dancing, unrestrained and unconstrained. Let me compare this dancing attitude to two other types that one might encounter in our society: 1) when I'm at a club, like a techno or hip hop club (which is not often, but just to set the scene), I see serious faces, contortions and postures that seem to belong to heads removed from bodies, removed from all of their surroundings, physical and emotional; and 2) the dances of the silly and ridiculous - to old hip hop songs, classic rock, etc. - faces and bodies that clearly don't take it seriously, but seem to have fun that way.

The second way is definitely the one I most usually participate in. It is fun. But it's also self-conscious in a way; it's not really letting go. Then when I see folks at this K of C in Canton, they are dancing naturally, smiling, moving with ease, and clearly they care genuinely about the union of mind and body, nature and soul. I felt it for the short period I took to the dance floor. There certainly is no moral to this story, but I appreciate the whole scene: smiling, talking, joking, dancing... all toward a contented and relaxed ecstasy, even if that's a bit of a paradox. It didn't last too long (how could it?), but I want to recognize it as a special convergence toward a natural and ideal environment. When it does occur, I'm glad to experience it.

*Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, for those of you outside the region