Note: This was written in the wee hours of 12/18/14 (with final notation added upon exiting train much later that evening)
After an eventful evening spent waiting for a train that I believed would never come, I find myself hurtling along the California countryside (somewhere near Modesto, if the aromatic bovine bouquet has not misled me), only one hundred and fifty minutes behind schedule. I thought about trying to get some kind of sleep, as it’s almost 2 a.m., and I’ve been awake the better part of today (yesterday, really), but here’s my chance to sit and write without interruption, and that’s a better deal than I’ve had all week at home. Like I mentioned before this vacation was nearly derailed, it has been quite nearly a dozen years since my last interstate journey riding the rails.
When I moved down to California, I left behind a sorrow patterned on self-destruction in the hopes of something better beneath the promise of a sunny sky. I was running away from death, drugs, and my own inner demons into the safety of the unknown. It was the first time in my life that I made a positive investment in my future by rejecting the safety of the devil with which I was all-too-intimately familiar in favor of something which terrified me to my very core: any kind of change whatsoever. My best friend lured me down with palm trees and saved me from myself. I bought a one-way ticket and hoped that I could find happiness in a place called Emeryville.
As I was getting situated this evening, I took a look at the things which I’d brought with me: an iPod Classic, a laptop with a 17.9” HD screen (running Windows 7), a smartphone, a Nikon D40x, and 2 Kindles (one Fire, one regular). I realized that none of these things existed when I’d come to California. It’s sometimes hard to see how fantastic the world has become (probably more accurately: science fictional) over the years, as each advancement is only slightly better than what came before, and the giants leaps are soon buried beneath banality.
In January of 2003, I could not have imagined carrying my entire music library with me on a device smaller than a pack of smokes. Laptops existed, but HD screens (and Blu-Ray drives) did not. In 2004, I owned a Nokia Brick on MetroPCS’ Neighborhood Wide Network, and now I’ve got a tiny little box that works as an internet machine, stereo, V.C.R., camera (still and video), and Dreamcast. I used to have a Pentax in High School (something 5000), and took real photographs (usually in Black and White). Dear Gods, how I would have killed to have a machine like I have now, and it’s seven years old, and was the low-range model. And Kindles. I used to carry three or four books with me at any given time, so as to always have a fresh tale waiting for me should I finish one, or simply need a break. And my Fire is the stuff of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I moved to California, and wound up living in the future.
Once again, I find I’m on a train running the length of the West Coast, running from where I’m at, on the back of a one-way ticket. My life is in flux. I’ve seen what I can do in the Golden State, and wonder how the Emerald City might treat me upon my return. I’m burned out on restaurants and Niners fans and the lack of rain, and with it, the camaraderie that a common enemy provides. I’m not sure Seattle is where I want to hang my hat forever, as Mexico still sweetly whispers me her promises of happiness and glory, but I’m fairly certain that my time in the San Francisco Bay Area has come, mercifully, to an end.
I want something better for my family than I am able to provide in Not-Quite Richmond, CA. I want my son to actually receive an education at an institution that hasn’t failed its students so profoundly for so very long, that its parents have the right to move their children to any other school AT NO COST TO THE PARENTS. Unfortunately, this problem is so endemic, that there is waiting list to transfer to even the marginally better schools. Meanwhile my son is languishing in a classroom where I have to beg his teacher to speak to me in Spanish because her accent is so thick I cannot otherwise understand her. And because my wife registered our son, they listed Spanish as his Primary Language, and popped in an ESL class faster than the District could throw money at them. Despite informing them that he’s been exposed to English since before his birth, and is as fluent as any 2nd Grader might hope to be, they refuse to put him back in a standard Language Arts class, because that would mean they’d forfeit all that sweet, sweet money.
But the move would be yet another step further away from her family for my wife. She likes her in-laws, and they like her, but at least California is adjacent to Mexico, and Washington, however beautiful and majestic, is geographically in the entirely wrong direction. I think I could convince her, were I not so eager myself to explore a land unknown to me, to move up to my home state if she were able to vacation in Zumpango. The process is drawn out and I frequently feel that the lawyers are just messing with us and pocketing our cash. It’s frustrating at best. My wife has come to love my family like they were her own, but it’s still a poor substitute for laying eyes upon parents she’s not seen in over a decade.
When she came here it was to fix a family problem and then leave; she never had any intention of falling in love with some dirty gringo and having another child seventeen years after her first. But we found one another, both lost and looking for someone with whom we could argue. I look over at her sleeping form and smile. She is so beautiful when she sleeps.
We pulled into King Street Station in Seattle a little after 10pm. We’re only an hour and a half late. Time to walk down to the ferry in the pouring rain and head over to The Island for a couple of weeks.
-Tex
Stay tuned tomorrow for The Adventures of Tex and Fed in The Land of The Murdertrees