From The Inkwell by Jack Galmitz

                Business took me to the Capitol & having never been there before I made haste to prepare an itinerary.
                A few phone calls placed & I reserved a room & on Saturday I went to the Central Station & purchased round-trip tickets to take me to the Capitol.
                All that remained was finding someone willing to feed my cats while I was away & as luck would have it my step-son, Sun Li, was agreeable.
                 So, with knapsack packed, I said farewell to each cat in turn & set off on a cool Spring day that promised a later sun.

On a Spring day,
Saying farewell-
One cat yawns

                As the first leg of the journey was underground in the rock blasted tunnels of the city’ s subways, the sun would have to wait, though.

A fine Spring day
Cut off in its prime
On the subway train

                Slower than usual, the familiar stations passed by. Strangers got on. Strangers got off. Then, passing under a river above the tunnel, we entered another county & soon I reached my station.
                Up into the light I walked surrounded by hundreds-of-thousands of people, each with his or her own destination in mind. I felt lost momentarily, but soon found my bearings & went down stairs into the cavernous spaces of the Central Train Station.
                 Here was the hub of railroad traffic where trains stopped & departed to all parts of the country.
Being a novice traveller & there being so many people, so much movement, so many distractions, I was bewildered. I went to an information booth & a man placed there for such contingencies pointed me to a great waiting room & told me to look at the monitors- they would give my train’ s information & track of departure.
                I found my train listed & also saw that the train I had planned to take one-hour later was delayed. It might have been a mere accident or anxiety that had prompted me to leave early, but I couldn’ t help but feel that something had directed my course fortuitously.

There is something
That helps us live-
Spring

                When my train did arrive, I couldn’ t find its track, so again the same man as before put me in the right direction.
                Down further into the depths of the earth I went & at the bottom stood a sentry- a man who time & labor had softened to resignation & compassion & he pointed me to the car that would unload at the Capitol.
                Boarding, I saw that everyone was seated on only one side of the car, but not thinking anything of it, I sat on the opposite side of the aisle, happy to have a seat alone to enjoy the view out the window.
                Mile upon mile, as we made our way out of the tunnels & the city, all I saw were rock ledges of mountains that had been removed long ago when the line was built.
                I wondered if that would be all I saw for three hours: pressed to moist stone so close it felt like I was buried.
                As chance would have it, I peered across the aisle out the opposite windows & there under the broad clear sky, fringed by small wooded islands & framed by purple mountains, was the molten-movement of the Hudson River.
                Then, I understood why everyone sat on that side of the train; they were all well-travelled.
I accepted my fate & took pleasure in the swift movement of the train- as effortless, quiet, & sure as the Hudson River itself.

                 A journey by train-
                The Hudson River rolls on
                The other way

                As the train progressed, moving further North, the view outside my window improved, too. There were open grassy spaces, great ancient warehouses with farm equipment left in their yards, graneries, cement mixing factories with large chutes & piles of sand & piles of rocks.
                The stations became quainter, too, more rural, less populous, with names bearing remembrance to the peoples who had originally inhabited the regions.
                In no time at all, traveling without impediment, we pulled into the Capitol. The train station was small & undistinguished & I took a cab from there to my rented hotel room in a rather shabby part of town.

 

                I checked in, left my knapsack in the room, & went to a small, local restaurant where I had a meagre diner.
                I soon went back to the hotel to go to sleep, since the sole purpose of my journey was a long State examination that would be held the following morning.
                In unfamiliar surroundings, though, I found myself unable to sleep. Besides, for many years I had had dreams where I appeared for an examination- one that would decide my whole future- on the wrong day or too late to be admitted & here it was happening in time.
                I lay awake all night, occassionally looking out at the large, tangled trees that grew to the unlikely height of my window. The only sign of life out there at all was an empty bird’ s nest composed of last year’ s leavess tucked in a crotch of an old tree.

In a hotel room
I look out at a bird’ s nest
& feel kinship

                Toward dawn, my mind was finally overcome by my body & I fell asleep for an hour before the wake-up-call came that I had put little faith in.
                Weak & wobbly I began the day. A hardy breakfast of eggs & sausages did not fortify me.
                I walked in a dream through hilly streets lined with blossomed pear trees that were shedding their petals to the wind’ s command to the great complex of buildings of the State Plaza. I entered the long marble catacombs of the Concourse. It was like a city within a city & I had a difficult time finding Meeting Room I, which is where my exam was scheduled to take place.
                A man directed me to distant corridor called The Egg; it was so far away, I couldn’ t see it. But, I was to make a right when I got there & then another right.
                When I did reach my destination, I found Meeting Room I quite empty, it being hours before the scheduled time for the exam.
                 I went to one then another of the huge cafeterias in this vaulted city & sat alone & drank one then another cup of coffee. Intermittently, I went outside to where the buses stopped to smoke a cigarette hoping that the caffeine & nicotine would produce a clarity in me. They didn’ t, though.
                Finally, the time for the exam arrived. I was greeted by a woman I had had telephone contact with before & she was most gracious. As I was from out-of-town, she located the telephone numbers of different taxi companies for me, so I would be able to call them & have them take me to the train station when the time came.
                The exam itself was predictably difficult; it was designed to weed out as many applicants as possible & given that the exam was testing a candidate’ s ability to be able to represent the injured workers of the State, it was not entirely unfair to make the test as difficult as possible.
                As I had practiced in the field of compensation for injured workers for sixteen years, even in my sleep-deprived delirium, I was able to sit & answer the questions for three & a half hours.
                When I finished, I thanked the proctors for all their help & on the street, between towering State buildings, a scruffy man from the working-class quarters of the city directed me to a bus that would leave me off at the train station.
                Not since I was a boy has anyone taken the pains that this man did to be sure I got to where I was going. When another bus pulled at the stop & he began to run to catch it, he stopped & turned & shouted to me that this bus would also serve my purpose.
                As we turned & wended our way through circular streets of the city, he made certain that I was informed where we were & when I was to get off.
                On the train home, I sat on the river side & watched the wind & the prevailing currents shape the Hudson River’ s waves as they broke on shore or ran out toward the islets of last year’ s reeds that whimpered so hushly that only the cranes & the red-winged black birds could hear them.
                On the shore rocks, I saw a man fishing alone & though he was tiny in the distance, I felt certain that he must have caught something for his troubles.

Fishing from the rocks
Along the Hudson River-
The world is attached

                When I finally reached the Central Station of my home city, it was just in time to see workers on their way home. It was as if a great pent-up river had broken though a thick rock wall & hundreds-of-thousands all rushed in one available channel.
                I went up the tall stairs in the other direction to the sun to be alone for a while, if anyone can be alone in this world of infinite belonging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2004 Jack Galmitz

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