Trains

When I first came out to the Bay area, I was completely overwhelmed.  It wasn't that I was in the process of pulling myself out of the bleak desperation that beckoned me in every avenue of possibility for my future, or that I was committing myself to something I couldn't be sure of, while indebting myself to faceless corporations for sums I could hardly fathom, or that every moment of my day was surrounded by innumerable strangers with whom I'd have to interact with on only the most superficial level. 

No, even when I began to make friends and meet people, the overwhelming thing for me was knowing there was no single person who'd ever understand what the experience was like for me.  That I was navigating through a world I didn't want to belong to, but couldn't leave alone.  That my reasons for taking classes at a school like UC Berkeley were not the same as any of my classmates.  That I was not freshly out of high school, still holding on to mom and dad's coattails, but on my own, and the problems that came my way ended with me.  That I had spent most of my life avoiding the kinds of competition I'd meet every day on campus, that I'd feel at once like a country bumpkin visiting the city, and an adult sitting in a kindergarten. That what I was doing was completely uncharted for me - nobody had plotted the way, nobody had gone through the experience and told me what to expect, nobody stood by ready to give me advice on how to deal with the issues I had to face, though I must have fantasized often enough that such a mentor could exist.  I had thought of this since I was about fourteen, when I could look over my future life with precision and clarity, and understood everything the world had to offer me - at fourteen, when I would ace any test a teacher would give me without having glanced at any homework, and my teachers would puzzle over why I did nothing in class but ranked 99th percentile in the state on my tests.  At fourteen, when I could see I had no desire to spend my life playing the games, jumping the hoops and running on hamster wheels that everyone was told would give them all they wanted out of life.

This feeling would come to me mostly as I traveled back and forth from Oakland to Berkeley on the Bart.  There was something about being surrounded by others, quietly following a daily ritual, something just outside of feeling - a pain I had grown numb to, observing how many people continued to take part in the facade offered us by a social structure built on exploitation and greed.  Still, an underground train was a kind of luxury for someone like me.  I often had a feeling that there was something sophisticated about being adult enough to travel by train, that this was something the urbane, cultured people of the world did in their large cities where important things happened, moving themselves from place to place on shiny metal and glass conveyors, their engines filling the air with the noise of modern technological progress.

I'm not so overwhelmed these days.  The train no longer seems sophisticated.  As the familiar whine of the electric motors moving metal wheels against the protesting metal tracks fills the quiet underground tunnels, I get a different feeling.  The dingy glass doesn't shine so much, the dull metal seems less glossy, and the weary looks of the occupants seem less urbane and cultured.  There's just people here, jumping through their hoops, running on the hamster wheels.  The same as me.  And I'm not so alone.