Steven Hunley
10-02-2012, 03:50 PM
No Butts at the Blue Line Station
by
Steven Hunley
The man had a cell phone-but no money. I had no job and was on my way to an interview.
I was half-asleep, having stayed up late the night before watching an old movie on Turner Classic Movies, Anna Karenina, where Greta Garbo threw herself under a train at the end. I have no use for Russian authors, with their over-long books stuffed like cabbage filled with constant brooding and unhappy endings. Things are tough enough in the USSR the way it is.
He sat next to me on a bench at the Del Amo station, and Ray Bans hid his eyes, giving him a certain anonymity I admired. Old black gentlemen sporting close-cut hair have this thing going on where the silver hair on their head and beard contrasts formally with their coal dark skin, giving them a refined fashionable look, like a tuxedo, even though in his case their pants needed mending.
We both faced the tracks and were quietly contemplating the warm afternoon, an afternoon wrapped in silence, rare in a city, with no sheriff’s helicopters or ambulances screaming by to interrupt. There were only the two shiny rails going off to each side, narrowing to an invisible vanishing point in the distance, and rocks and gravel in between. The gravel reminded me of a Zen garden where monks raked small pebbles into designs mimicking nature, and contemplating their patterns set your mind free.
Me, flexing my over-active imagination, that’s all it was, nothing more.
But where I saw nothing, or everything, microcosm for macrocosm so to speak, he, who was there before me for some time, meditating no doubt, had already found the two paramount mental qualities that arise from wholesome meditative practice: serenity or tranquility and insight, and knew what he wanted, something spiritual no doubt.
He arose from his meditation and looked down while taking a few steps closer to the edge of the platform. He squatted and sat, dangling his legs out over the edge. Scooting closer, he jumped down onto the tracks.
What was this? Some sort of kamikaze banzai move? Was it Anna Karenina all over again in Long Beach?
He bent over and picked up something small and valuable. He turned to the left and kept walking until he was out of sight. I couldn’t see what he had. All I saw was an assortment of rocks and gravel and cigarette butts. But his backpack was sitting on the bench next to me which showed he’d already taken my measure and trusted the man that he saw. When he reappeared he was smiling.
I gave him, what cliché-ridden novelists refer to as, ‘a questioning glance’.
He proudly held up his find, and displayed a cigarette butt, unlike most others I spied, one-half inch remained unsmoked.
Because a breeze had come up it took several clicks of his BIC to ignite it.
“It’s a perfect southern California day,” I observed.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Not too hot, not too cold.”
“Like Goldilocks, it’s just right.”
The PA clanger clanged, indicating the train was approaching. Just as well. He’d had four hits and it was down to the filter anyway.
“How was it?”
“It tasted soooo good!”
Sure it did. Any guy who’d leap from the platform for a butt could easily walk a mile for a Camel.
The train pulled up and the doors opened with a ~whoosh~. I stepped in, got a seat, not one facing forward or backward, but one near the door facing the opposite wall. I put my pen in my pocket, for certainly this episode was over, there was nothing left to write.
It was crowded and from the other end of the car a hawker’s voice rang out, “Freeze Pops for a quarter, ice cold water one dollar.”
The thirsty crowd surged forward and revealed a poster on the opposite side of the car. It proclaimed in large letters:
QUIT AGAIN FOR THE LAST TIME
For free help when you’re ready to quit call
1-800 NO BUTTS
©Steven Hunley 2012
by
Steven Hunley
The man had a cell phone-but no money. I had no job and was on my way to an interview.
I was half-asleep, having stayed up late the night before watching an old movie on Turner Classic Movies, Anna Karenina, where Greta Garbo threw herself under a train at the end. I have no use for Russian authors, with their over-long books stuffed like cabbage filled with constant brooding and unhappy endings. Things are tough enough in the USSR the way it is.
He sat next to me on a bench at the Del Amo station, and Ray Bans hid his eyes, giving him a certain anonymity I admired. Old black gentlemen sporting close-cut hair have this thing going on where the silver hair on their head and beard contrasts formally with their coal dark skin, giving them a refined fashionable look, like a tuxedo, even though in his case their pants needed mending.
We both faced the tracks and were quietly contemplating the warm afternoon, an afternoon wrapped in silence, rare in a city, with no sheriff’s helicopters or ambulances screaming by to interrupt. There were only the two shiny rails going off to each side, narrowing to an invisible vanishing point in the distance, and rocks and gravel in between. The gravel reminded me of a Zen garden where monks raked small pebbles into designs mimicking nature, and contemplating their patterns set your mind free.
Me, flexing my over-active imagination, that’s all it was, nothing more.
But where I saw nothing, or everything, microcosm for macrocosm so to speak, he, who was there before me for some time, meditating no doubt, had already found the two paramount mental qualities that arise from wholesome meditative practice: serenity or tranquility and insight, and knew what he wanted, something spiritual no doubt.
He arose from his meditation and looked down while taking a few steps closer to the edge of the platform. He squatted and sat, dangling his legs out over the edge. Scooting closer, he jumped down onto the tracks.
What was this? Some sort of kamikaze banzai move? Was it Anna Karenina all over again in Long Beach?
He bent over and picked up something small and valuable. He turned to the left and kept walking until he was out of sight. I couldn’t see what he had. All I saw was an assortment of rocks and gravel and cigarette butts. But his backpack was sitting on the bench next to me which showed he’d already taken my measure and trusted the man that he saw. When he reappeared he was smiling.
I gave him, what cliché-ridden novelists refer to as, ‘a questioning glance’.
He proudly held up his find, and displayed a cigarette butt, unlike most others I spied, one-half inch remained unsmoked.
Because a breeze had come up it took several clicks of his BIC to ignite it.
“It’s a perfect southern California day,” I observed.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Not too hot, not too cold.”
“Like Goldilocks, it’s just right.”
The PA clanger clanged, indicating the train was approaching. Just as well. He’d had four hits and it was down to the filter anyway.
“How was it?”
“It tasted soooo good!”
Sure it did. Any guy who’d leap from the platform for a butt could easily walk a mile for a Camel.
The train pulled up and the doors opened with a ~whoosh~. I stepped in, got a seat, not one facing forward or backward, but one near the door facing the opposite wall. I put my pen in my pocket, for certainly this episode was over, there was nothing left to write.
It was crowded and from the other end of the car a hawker’s voice rang out, “Freeze Pops for a quarter, ice cold water one dollar.”
The thirsty crowd surged forward and revealed a poster on the opposite side of the car. It proclaimed in large letters:
QUIT AGAIN FOR THE LAST TIME
For free help when you’re ready to quit call
1-800 NO BUTTS
©Steven Hunley 2012