wednesdays and fridays

on wednesdays and fridays i find myself seated with random strangers on a train heading south into the city. i look for the nearest empty seat, sit, and open my book - sometimes my sociology text book or wendell berry or some other homework assignment. the rhythm of the train and the rays of the sun usually let me drift off to sleep for just a few minutes. i hear in the background

SALEM

LYNN

CHELSEA

we're getting closer.

they call the last stop: north station and i walk off this train with a hundred people i don't know, but we're all going somewhere and we gotta get there fast. we're wearing our black boots and coats and scarves and mittens and talking on our cell phones and entering into the city just like it's any normal day. we're swimming upstream and we don't look back. 

 i go pass the dunkin' donuts and the bruins posters and push open the door outside. the TD garden sign is big and it reminds me that here, in boston, our sports teams are a religion. i am no longer cheering for the UCLA bruins. i'm cheering for hockey bruins and we ARE stanley cup champions. 

i cross the street and i'm enveloped in the big buildings of the city. for these 10 minutes of walking i forget about school, about graduation, about questions and frustrations and everything else. the city feels big and the buildings are tall and i find myself looking up into the sky and just being happy that they're there. 

to my left is faneuil hall and i can see the big clock tower. i walk along the bricks, sometimes clumsuly in my high heeled shoes, wondering why i didn't inherit my grandmother's skillful walking in stilletos. 

finally i'm at the old state house and there's this placard in the ground that says March 5, 1770 and i remember being here in high school with my dad who stuck out like a sore thumb being so tall and wearing his CAL sweatshirt with the tourist map in towe. we were standing where the boston massacre happened and i remember wanting to come back to the east coast. somehow. someday.

i get to my street and i'm in between the tallest buildings and it's sort of gray because their shadows cast down on the alley way but it doesn't feel dark or lonely, it feels good. and rejuvinating. i enter the office and press the button to get on the elevator and i look up at the mirror-roof and smile big because somehow i navigated my way there. and i loved the journey it took to get there. 

i'm in boston. where we hate new york, where we know how to swear and our street cred isn't real unless we use the f word in every sentence. i'm in boston where we might not go to work after the pats loose and where mike's pastry shop sells the most delicious cannolis and we have statues of paul revere. i'm in a city that i know so little about but at the same time know that i love being in it - even when i don't have an exact place to go or agenda to meet, i feel excited by the noises and the hustle-bustle and the smells of cigarette smoke and italian restaurants and sea food.

i cross the streets to go back to north station and i know i'm going in the right direction because i see the bridge with the huge suspensions. i find a seat somewhere on the train and sit next to people who i don't know but think have been working for hours and are excited to come home and get out of the city. the same city that i love to get in. i sit there and watch the conductors open the doors for each stop.
CHELSEA
LYNN
SALEM

and then i am home.