by the train

Most people find their muse in a person or a in a beautiful setting.  Maybe they are inspired by poetry or riding their bike.  For me...it's the Baltimore Light Rail.

Being from Annapolis, Maryland, the former Capital of the US and a small town in it's own right, the wonders of public transportation rarely found their way into my daily commute. 

Here everyone gets out their bike or their golf cart or their beamer or their boat to get where they need to go.  Some might argue that the Annapolitan's preference of private transportation has forever handicapped its ability to develop a reliable public system.  Chicken or the Egg - the situation is just bad.

After college I started working in Baltimore and decided that instead of paying for parking, which no Annapolis native will do in their right mind, I would take the Baltimore Light Rail into work.  So early each morning I would rise and go to Cromwell station to wait for the good old four car white stallion.  And every morning it would squeak in, rattling,  as if every bolt needed to be screw down and sodded. 

 

This hunk of metal was anything but faithful.  The power would go out at random and we would be stuck squirming in our seats (if you had a seat) for up to an hour.  The electric power lines would freeze and break on the coldest day of the year leaving hundreds of commuters out in the cold swearing just to keep their lips moving or a shooting on the north end of the track would shut down the rail entirely.  

Needless to say I got used to waiting and it was in this seemingly frustrating time of my day that I began to write.  It was here, at the convergence of every kind of humanity (poor or rich, snobby or kind, homeless and helpless) that music started to flow from my spirit into physical being.  

You see, waiting, though aggravating and inconvenient, provides us with a much needed pause, a rest, a break, to breath and observe.  It requires us to stop and just be (provided we don't have our iphones).  And this space gives us room to grow.

It was on the Baltimore Light Rail that I began my love affair with writing - a place to observe humanity and understand my own - but more so a place to slow myself down and truly see beauty everywhere even on the Light Rail.