Blood On The Tracks

Trapped in a spaced-out mind on the G train, somewhere between Brooklyn and Queens, I was busy contemplating the potential collapse of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the numerous possible repercussions that could ensue that would further eat away at my brain—multiple dimensions, time travel, loop thought, endless existence, life is an illusion, etc…  Simmering in the mind, these thoughts can easily bring about horrible images and thoughts into the imagination. Time-traveling nazis is just one crazy idea that could sound not-so-crazy, after all (i.e., The Guns of the South). The floor of the world you know can seem to disappear right out from under your feet.

After arriving at the Court House Square station, I hopped onto an express 7 train that was packed to the ceiling with the servants of Manhattan’s elite. For a few minutes, we stood shoulder-to-shoulder in complete silence (obviously warn out from the long workday) in our little sardine box; just breathing in the thick, dank humid breath of one another. While waiting to move forward, another train arrived on the opposite side of the platform. Its passengers clawed their way through the doors and windows and proceeded to jump over each other in a mad dash across the platform to inject themselves into my sardine can on rails.

Two minutes or so passed, and the small Spanish child sitting on top of my head finally said, “I don’t think we’re going anywhere, señor.” I slightly nodded, and he almost fell off his perch. Sure enough, the conductor came on the intercom to announce that train service was suspended and for everyone to get off the train and find an alternative way to get home.

Worn-out, wrinkled, tan, yellow, black, and white faces turned to stone, and the air filled with thunderous voices of disapproving boos and hisses. An unexpected change in one’s plans can be quite difficult to accept. As I shuffled out of the train and onto the platform, which was now occupied by a few hundred baffled or enraged citizens, I took out my phone and typed in “Queens” on my Twitter app search bar. The first message I found said a man had been struck by a train at a station further down the line and was pronounced DOA by paramedics on the scene.

I was most likely one of the few, if not the only, to know why train service had been abruptly shut down. As I stood there, digesting the information and considering my options of getting home, a conductor stepped out of the train and began shutting the doors. The crowd turned their attention to the young man in uniform and began asking how they could get home and when the train would run again. “Ladies and gentlemen, a passenger has been injured up ahead. I’m sorry but you will have to find another way home tonight. The trains will not run for a few hours.” Without hesitation, the lady standing next to me yells at the top of her lungs, “Let them die!”

That response took me back a little. If only she knew that he had died, would she still act as though her night had been ruined? Would I have experienced that understandable frustration if I hadn’t known?

The next morning at work, I learned that a good friend had been diagnosed with cancer and had begun chemotherapy the previous night—possibly while I was sitting on the G train filling myself with the fear of living in a routine world where change is often not welcome. And besides, the world was once flat.

Hunkered down in my cubicle, I listened through Bob Dylan’s 1975 record Blood on the Tracks.

“He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train,
Moving with a simple twist of fate.”

—Dylan, A Simple Twist of Fate