Riding Metro North. The Morning After…

~ Live & Learn

train-tracks-paris-metro

Just another ordinary autumn morning in November. But, and it’s a big But, this one follows the U.S. Presidential election.

It’s the first train to Grand Central: the 5:01 am. The 1% fills this train. The traders, the bankers, the Suits, the professional class.

I am Them.

Overnight, the Earth has shifted, and cracked.

All heads in this train car are down.  The gleaming late model Apple devices beam the story lines. “Election results driven by the poor white…the rural vote…the non-college educated…”  These written words coming from the same college educated who got it all so wrong, are now anxiously explaining what went wrong and why, and they are soon to pivot to telling us what happens next. Stunned.

The Words coming from these pens and keyboards (and now digested by their Readers) are less confident today, less certain about outcomes, and fear a change of the status quo.  Mary Oliver describes the anxiety in ‘Sister Turtle’: “You can fool a lot of yourself but you can’t fool the soul. That worrier.”

A few of the non-1% riders get off at Stamford and then at Harlem-125th Street. A construction worker with his scuffed steel toe boots and lime green fluorescent vest.  Your cable man wearing a navy blue logo shirt with a copy of the NY Post tucked under his arm. A Mother, with her heavy eye lids and her oversized and well-worn overcoat, heading to the first of her two jobs – – this after packing the kids’ lunches and picking up the sitter.

I watched them exit.

The train pulls out of the Harlem station and enters the tunnel.

Dismissing the misogyny, the garishness, the Wall, and making history by electing the first female U.S. president, they have spoken and said: Enough.

What’s that I smell?

Is that Hope (from the 99%) that lingers in this train car?

Notes:

  • Photo: via Newthom (Michael Kenna :: Metro at Passy, Paris, 1991). Mary Oliver quote from Upstream.
  • Related Posts: Commuting

46 thoughts on “Riding Metro North. The Morning After…”

  2. As you say. David, just another November day, But one which I suspect we will all remember for a while. Your poor white, rural and non college educated have certainly given us all plenty to chew on.

    I’m a natural optimist, but this reduces even me to a state of pessimism. I fear “nothing good will come of it.”

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  3. No, I assure you it is NOT hope you’re smelling.

    And maybe this time I’ll disagree with Oliver. The Soul is a Warrior, not a worrier.

    I tucked my 12 year old in her bed crying her heart out, as I was acting calm and collected.
    Had to have a stern conversation with all of them to hide their disappointment. To hide it well.
    Yes, now I fear for their safety and well being.

    It is so not another day. But we have to pay our rent/mortgage, we have to put food on our tables. So, life goes on.

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      1. “Now we go back to basics, the last refuge for us all, we redouble our efforts to be respectful, compassionate and decent, sprinkled with random acts of kindness every day.”

        Great words by my friend Melanie Gow from England

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  4. Difficult; with crusty eye lids, drooping from lack of sleep, a throat, harsh from angry words that peter-out in whimpers, a tingly nose, tears that hold resentment and utter frustration and doom seep, out, of somewhere I thought was SAFE.
    Who’re the bastards that ignorantly came out of the marked hatred of their barrels, to fill-in the ovals for Bullying, Disrespect, and Racism?
    I won’t go to gentle Hope…not yet, not until I suffer the lack.

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  7. I woke this morning feeling as if from a good but imperfect dream, to find I am living in a nightmare. Trying hard to work through the grief I feel for the loss of innocence. Looking for some good in this. I suppose if there is anything it is the opportunity to move forward with the determination to look to the Light and not to lose faith in all that I believe to be good.

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  9. I was able to keep the tears from falling…until my 9 year old granddaughter started crying this morning as she held onto me. We both cried for a while until I was finally able to speak to her of love and never-ending hope. This is all so unfair to the children.

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  10. We’ll remember this day And I fear, not in good. I’m really not someone who goes to church every Sunday. But I pray. And this is what I did this morning. For them, for us.

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  11. So many speak of simply smiling, smelling the roses, looking at the pretty things. Ignoring your troubles as if they do not exist. Choosing to be cheery. I agree to a point. There is nothing ‘productive’ – to be had from pettiness, abject fear, or blind rage. The deed is done.
    We have to move forward. Survivors create hope & have patience. And, have backup plans if hope is misplaced.

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    2. My postman helped me yesterday lift something awkward and heavy, and required nothing more in “payment” other than my offer to bake his young boys chocolate chip cookies.
      Which I did today and…smiled in gratitude for the graciousness of others.

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  12. As Gandhi proved and Margaret Mead eloquently stated, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
    Keep the faith and lets continue to be kind and support each other 🙏

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  15. We are listening and concerned for you over here. Please don’t think you are alone!! The fears are palpable even here. We all have been challenged by it, as individuals, as families, as groups and in short..as a generation. I trust and believe that we are challenged for a reason.. for what, and in which, can amount to a growth of understanding and ultimate goodness if we keep our spirit of love alive. What does it expose of our collective level of understanding and integrity today? What does it make us question? I’m not sure! But it is a shake up of such a proportion leading us to dive deep into our hearts.. to look and find answers that an otherwise softer outcome would not have stimulated. I believe we, who believe in the soul and value the spirit of the heart and who are presently in droves!! in this generation.. are equiped to meet it. Stay hopeful, stay convinced.. you are not alone.

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  17. Read @Sarah_Smarsh in the Guardian and you will stop saying poor white trash, They didn’t elect Trump and neither did the younger voter. Look at the demographics, White educated, middle class people elected him.

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      1. Yes that is it, Naomi Klein has some interesting things to say as well. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/rise-of-the-davos-class-sealed-americas-fate?CMP=share_btn_tw. I have been fascinated with American politics since 1970 when I married an American draft dodger. I have matured but am still a bit of a junky. It seems to me that it was a vote against not for. Let’s just throw out the baby and make a wholesale change. Could be interesting! Happy to be Canadian. I spent 20 years working internationally, I am one of the 1% and it wasn’t until we moved here and I took a job with a non profit to do resource development that my thinking became more interesting, and I think evolved.

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    2. In the same way the Great Recession has introduced much of middle America to the grinding despair that was for decades the norm among the poor and marginalized, so, too has the Crisis of Authority projected onto the national scrim images of elite corruption and incompetence that have made up the scenery of life in poor neighborhoods for ages. The broken pipes are no longer confined to public housing residents; we are all ankle-deep in the water.

      Such betrayals produce a cumulative effort. They prompt citizens to adopt a crossover skepticism about the very legitimacy of the project of self-government.

      ~ Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

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  18. It saddens me to read the comments found here. I’ve felt some of the same things for two election cycles which put the current president into office — who has brought our country to a healthcare system which is no longer affordable, to a place in this world where the country I love is the punchline to an international joke, and so many other things I see that I personally think are wrong or unfair. I was willing to give the man I didn’t vote for the benefit of the doubt after the previous two elections — and have found him to be sadly lacking in so many ways. I was also willing to give Mrs. Clinton the benefit of the doubt had she been elected despite the swirling tornado of suspicion that seemed to follow her throughout all of her 30-year political career. I just believe everyone should be given a chance. Shame on you who are so judgmental of someone who has only just been elected. Shame on you who have decided that the next four years will be next to hell on earth. To wish that someone fail before they have even had a chance to begin doing the job they have been elected to do is tremendously disappointing. I realize I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer; indeed, I’m probably in a drawer to which I do not belong – and I will stay away rather than be a thorn in everyone’s side, even though I have greatly enjoyed one of the few blogs I read everyday. But for all the bloviation I see here and in reaction to the disappointment they have suffered, liberals can no longer proclaim to be an open-minded group of people…in my humble but unsolicited opinion…

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    1. I didn’t “decide, that the next four years will be next to hell on earth”. But I’m really worried. And I have reasons enough. If a man, who promised to act against homosexuals, immigrants, muslims or any other people that don’t share his way of seing the world, gets one of the most powerful jobs in the world, I really have reasons enough. The history of my homecountry is the best example for the suffer, death and cruelty that one man can bring over the world, if he shouts loud enough to be seen as the best and most successful “Reichschancelor”.

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    2. I agree with much of what you said. Approx 60 million people voted for each candidate. What we may think of the “other” candidate, 60 million of our fellow Americans felt strongly about their candidate to get out and vote. It’s healing time. Time to rally behind each other and the President and move forward.

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