Car 6448

It's 6:30 and I'm on the train, the Hudson line from Poughkeepsie to Manhattan, the first of two legs on my journey to Philadelphia this morning. The train is full when I board at Beacon, already full though there's only been two prior stops, and I wonder who these people are, commuting so far so early in the morning and I think: this could have been me. There's such a routine and ritual here, of sleeping travelers and carefully folded newspapers, that I feel like a spoiler, unshaven in my flannel shirt, with my bright red backpack. There's such a routine here that the handsome conductor has to do complex math to tell me the price of my ticket, when every conductor I've ever seen before, working at more human hours, could rattle off peak and off peak prices without reference materials. No one buys tickets on this train, it's all monthly passes flashed quickly, and then there's me, a strange beast lurching through the darkness, stumbling towards sunrise. How many times have I taken this trip, I wonder, and think: I'll always be a stranger here. I settle into my foreignness, and I wait. The sun will be up soon.