My New Train of Thought

I just got back from a long-awaited vacation. My husband and I decided to be adventurous and take an Amtrak train up to Spokane to attend the wedding of two friends. There were a number of things that struck me.

One of the weirdest things about blogging to me thus far is that it is simultaneously a combination of intimacy and anonymity. But I had forgotten that this really isn't too different from other parts of my life after all. As I was riding North on a number of trains I sat next to or behind people who shared more about their lives with total strangers than I ever wanted to know. There was the guy who was married at nineteen to his 15 year old bride in Louisiana in the 60's. He was more than happy to share the finer points of his unconventional pharmaceutical explorations to anyone wanting to hear. Recently divorced from his second wife, he was now moving out to Idaho to visit a "lady friend" that he had met at a muesum the month before.

Then there was the staff worker on the train who was an aspiring actor/singer who entertained us with show tunes, bad jokes, and tales of the vile and slovenly habits of former train passengers. Or there was the guy returning from a rehearsal with a drum corps who was dead broke and returning home for some R&R and some financial assistance.

I saw the spectrum of the good the bad and the ugly: the couple who had such severe domestic quarrels on the train that they were kicked off to an awaiting police officer at the next town, or the guy that bought his broke seat-mate dinner (who he had never met before and who would never have opportunity to pay him back.) People would get into conversations where they revealed deep hopes, dreams, and pain, and then midway through stumble and say "By the way, my name's Bob, what's yours?"

Blogging isn't as foreign an experience to the rest of my life as I thought--it's just a variation on an older truth that people can reveal more of themselves in the safety of anonymous environments.