Postcards from Snake Nation
May. 18th, 2011 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonName: Jack. Rank: somewhere between Major Tom and General Labor. Serial Number: 1-800-GET-SOME. Location: Doraville Station. Time: 1800 hours or there about. Situation: Fresh off the job and eager to get the long haul home going.
Having just missed the train I’m doing Platform Patrol solo. It won’t last long, so I savor both the view and the solitude. The month is May but the weather’s strictly early Autumn. October gray sky cast wide over the abandoned Ford Motor plant. The wind whips cold and sharp, driving a fleet of massive low hanging clouds towards the horizon. Low enough that I’m tempted to reach up to see if I can rake my fingers through their passing current. Since, I’m alone I give it a longshot. Nothing.
Story of my life lately.
***
I don’t know when she boarded, Brookhaven or Lenox maybe, but Saint Bag-Lady was fired up and proselytizing fierce. For the first few stops she was just part of the ambient noise pollution you get on MARTA. Periodic intercom announcements, cell phone jingles, the bark of conversation, the mutter of the casually insane, the pleas accompanied by an empty palm thrust up and yes, the occasional sermon. It was the Fall of Rome all over again… only this time with trains.
It took a few stops before St. Bag-Lady’s sermon seeped through my book-locked attention, until her cadence swallowed up the words and the eyes jammed stuck on the same sentence for a full trip between stations. I glanced up and took her in. She boxed herself into an impromptu pulpit between the right-side central doors of the cab. Layered in sweaters, the topmost of which was bright green with sleeves to long for her arms so her hands resembled those of a wind puppet that had escaped its captivity before a used car lot. The last strands of a natty weave were plastered to her scalp, with a few loose strands caught across a bulged forehead. Her stare was bulged as if in a great fury and her lips seemed to have chewed different words than the ones coming out of them. A tattered skirt with a floral pattern worthy of a late 70’s shower curtain hung over dirty pale blue jeans.
At first I could hear only the rhythm and the flow of her voice, while the words themselves washed right over me, for I was fixated on the spectacle of her appearance alone. The waving handless arms and the bad lip-synch translation. Then everything went holy. She thrust a finger through the tunnel of her sleeves and directed it right for my sneer. The tempo of my awareness slowed and segued into hers until suddenly I knew exactly what she was saying.
“God sees you. He sees them grudges you be holding.” St. Bag-Lady flung her straitjacket sleeves around to take my fellow commuters in collectively. “All y’all be going round with them grudges not even knowing your carrying them. Grown men and woman acting like children - ‘Oh so-and-so did this to me’ and ‘so-and-so did that to me.’ Well God sees you, deep down inside you. It don’t matter if you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Catholic or Muslim or Jew, God sees that anger you got all bottled up where his love should be. How can he forgive you, if you won’t forgive your fellow man?”
I didn’t mean to but I snorted derisively and much louder than I intended. Suddenly I’m keenly aware of a whole lot of passengers looking at me. Some curious. Some shocked. More than a few amused but most just pissed that I’m adding to the post-rush hour circus. I feel this sharp prick of self-consciousness jab into me, the feeling of a first time poetry reading or high school sex. The urge to say something to fill in the void of this unexpected audience overwhelms me and before I can stop myself -
“Yeah, well maybe my fellow man should’ve thought of that before deciding to constantly fuck me over.” The cuss snatched everyone’s attention in earshot. I refused to squirm under the mob’s glare, under St. Bag-Lady’s relentless eyes or anyone else’s for that matter. I continued with a finger of my own thrust directly towards the ceiling: “And as far as your ‘Boss’ goes… I think he’s got enough anger issues of his own to deal with before he has a right to say anything about mine.”
Silence ensued. I rose my brows up as if to say – ‘We done here?’
Her glower wilted and shriveled into those of somebody’s lost grandmother, one who just realized she wasn’t home and in front of television anymore.
“Look…,” I sigh my apology exasperated and ashamed, “lady, please I don’t mean no harm. It’s just been a rough couple of days, s’all.”
Then the eyes bulged back out in ambush: “You think you the only one that been hurt?”
“No.” As quick as it rose the urge to joust her had faded.
“You the only one ever betrayed. The only one who ever got his heart broke?”
I suck at my teeth and refuse my tongue a ticket back into the fight.
“You think He ain’t hurt? Broken Hearted? Betrayed? Every day by everyone of y’all?” She rose her eyes heavenward and supplicated with those floppy arms before settling them back on me and then the crowd.
None of us said a word. They didn’t want to get involved and I didn’t know how to join them. Feign reading the book? Get off next stop and trade cars? Keep verbally sparring until one of us gives in?
“But He still loves you…,” she smiled at me, “He still hopes you’ll get some sense in your head and come back around to His way of seeing things.”
I snorted and shook my head.
“He sees you, Jack.” And at utterance of my name and the knowing grin she delivered it with, I felt the blood drain from my head into a swirl of panic nausea. “He knows them who done you wrong and more importantly those you’ve done wrong to. All those people you only think you’ve left behind.”
“How’d you…?” But the question is too ludicrous to finish and sputters off my mumble.
“What if I told you Tom forgives you for not answering the phone that day? What if I told you your Grandma forgives you for everything you never said on her deathbed? What if I asked you if He can forgive you and they can forgive you… then why can’t you forgive yourself?”
Before I could realize I had no answer the train rolled to a stop. West End.
“This is my song!” She winks and right then the doors chimed, swooshed open, allowing her to step backward through a surge of boarding passengers.
The holy moment passed and left me staring at the place she was not stupidly. Next stop Snake Nation and I got off reluctantly. I stood there on the platform and watched the train rattle off southbound, a lackadaisical steel serpent rumbling tired into the first ebb of night. The platform drained. I was alone again. I glanced up at the sky –
“I didn’t ask for anyone’s forgiveness… and come to think of it, neither did you.”
Turned around and descend the escalator to the bus, to the chores, to the bills, to the life and the hope of a moment within it without the weight of the grudge.
Having just missed the train I’m doing Platform Patrol solo. It won’t last long, so I savor both the view and the solitude. The month is May but the weather’s strictly early Autumn. October gray sky cast wide over the abandoned Ford Motor plant. The wind whips cold and sharp, driving a fleet of massive low hanging clouds towards the horizon. Low enough that I’m tempted to reach up to see if I can rake my fingers through their passing current. Since, I’m alone I give it a longshot. Nothing.
Story of my life lately.
I don’t know when she boarded, Brookhaven or Lenox maybe, but Saint Bag-Lady was fired up and proselytizing fierce. For the first few stops she was just part of the ambient noise pollution you get on MARTA. Periodic intercom announcements, cell phone jingles, the bark of conversation, the mutter of the casually insane, the pleas accompanied by an empty palm thrust up and yes, the occasional sermon. It was the Fall of Rome all over again… only this time with trains.
It took a few stops before St. Bag-Lady’s sermon seeped through my book-locked attention, until her cadence swallowed up the words and the eyes jammed stuck on the same sentence for a full trip between stations. I glanced up and took her in. She boxed herself into an impromptu pulpit between the right-side central doors of the cab. Layered in sweaters, the topmost of which was bright green with sleeves to long for her arms so her hands resembled those of a wind puppet that had escaped its captivity before a used car lot. The last strands of a natty weave were plastered to her scalp, with a few loose strands caught across a bulged forehead. Her stare was bulged as if in a great fury and her lips seemed to have chewed different words than the ones coming out of them. A tattered skirt with a floral pattern worthy of a late 70’s shower curtain hung over dirty pale blue jeans.
At first I could hear only the rhythm and the flow of her voice, while the words themselves washed right over me, for I was fixated on the spectacle of her appearance alone. The waving handless arms and the bad lip-synch translation. Then everything went holy. She thrust a finger through the tunnel of her sleeves and directed it right for my sneer. The tempo of my awareness slowed and segued into hers until suddenly I knew exactly what she was saying.
“God sees you. He sees them grudges you be holding.” St. Bag-Lady flung her straitjacket sleeves around to take my fellow commuters in collectively. “All y’all be going round with them grudges not even knowing your carrying them. Grown men and woman acting like children - ‘Oh so-and-so did this to me’ and ‘so-and-so did that to me.’ Well God sees you, deep down inside you. It don’t matter if you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Catholic or Muslim or Jew, God sees that anger you got all bottled up where his love should be. How can he forgive you, if you won’t forgive your fellow man?”
I didn’t mean to but I snorted derisively and much louder than I intended. Suddenly I’m keenly aware of a whole lot of passengers looking at me. Some curious. Some shocked. More than a few amused but most just pissed that I’m adding to the post-rush hour circus. I feel this sharp prick of self-consciousness jab into me, the feeling of a first time poetry reading or high school sex. The urge to say something to fill in the void of this unexpected audience overwhelms me and before I can stop myself -
“Yeah, well maybe my fellow man should’ve thought of that before deciding to constantly fuck me over.” The cuss snatched everyone’s attention in earshot. I refused to squirm under the mob’s glare, under St. Bag-Lady’s relentless eyes or anyone else’s for that matter. I continued with a finger of my own thrust directly towards the ceiling: “And as far as your ‘Boss’ goes… I think he’s got enough anger issues of his own to deal with before he has a right to say anything about mine.”
Silence ensued. I rose my brows up as if to say – ‘We done here?’
Her glower wilted and shriveled into those of somebody’s lost grandmother, one who just realized she wasn’t home and in front of television anymore.
“Look…,” I sigh my apology exasperated and ashamed, “lady, please I don’t mean no harm. It’s just been a rough couple of days, s’all.”
Then the eyes bulged back out in ambush: “You think you the only one that been hurt?”
“No.” As quick as it rose the urge to joust her had faded.
“You the only one ever betrayed. The only one who ever got his heart broke?”
I suck at my teeth and refuse my tongue a ticket back into the fight.
“You think He ain’t hurt? Broken Hearted? Betrayed? Every day by everyone of y’all?” She rose her eyes heavenward and supplicated with those floppy arms before settling them back on me and then the crowd.
None of us said a word. They didn’t want to get involved and I didn’t know how to join them. Feign reading the book? Get off next stop and trade cars? Keep verbally sparring until one of us gives in?
“But He still loves you…,” she smiled at me, “He still hopes you’ll get some sense in your head and come back around to His way of seeing things.”
I snorted and shook my head.
“He sees you, Jack.” And at utterance of my name and the knowing grin she delivered it with, I felt the blood drain from my head into a swirl of panic nausea. “He knows them who done you wrong and more importantly those you’ve done wrong to. All those people you only think you’ve left behind.”
“How’d you…?” But the question is too ludicrous to finish and sputters off my mumble.
“What if I told you Tom forgives you for not answering the phone that day? What if I told you your Grandma forgives you for everything you never said on her deathbed? What if I asked you if He can forgive you and they can forgive you… then why can’t you forgive yourself?”
Before I could realize I had no answer the train rolled to a stop. West End.
“This is my song!” She winks and right then the doors chimed, swooshed open, allowing her to step backward through a surge of boarding passengers.
The holy moment passed and left me staring at the place she was not stupidly. Next stop Snake Nation and I got off reluctantly. I stood there on the platform and watched the train rattle off southbound, a lackadaisical steel serpent rumbling tired into the first ebb of night. The platform drained. I was alone again. I glanced up at the sky –
“I didn’t ask for anyone’s forgiveness… and come to think of it, neither did you.”
Turned around and descend the escalator to the bus, to the chores, to the bills, to the life and the hope of a moment within it without the weight of the grudge.