Hump Day. Hump it was.
It’s the 9:06 pm train from Grand Central. A 15-hour day and it wasn’t over.
I sit with other weary commuters heading home. The train is silent.
I can’t get comfortable. I shift left, and then right and then lean against the window. I give up. I need to be horizontal, in my bed.
It’s Haunting. A Ghost. It’s Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost:
The faintest movement, a ripple, a disturbance of the air. I can sense a spiral, a lazy buzzing swirl, like flies; but it is not flies. There is nothing to see. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to hear. But it is motion, its insolent shift, makes my stomach heave. I can sense— at the periphery, the limit of all my senses— the dimensions of the creature. It is as high as a child of two. Its depth is a foot, fifteen inches. The air stirs around it, invisibly. I am cold, and rinsed by nausea. I cannot move. I am shaking. . . . This is the beginning of shame.
You are tired. You know that’s it. Let it go Man. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. Giving Up the Ghost.”