21 april 2008

princeton junction/

wood-paneled benches attached to the wood trim around the windows and the rest of the blue-tiled wall. large gray I-beams supporting the angled white terra cotta ceiling. an american flag hanging from an overhang between two whirring ceiling fans. a convex mirror across from the three ticket windows. an advertisement printed on the floor. above the doors leading to the platform, a sign flicked on in dull orange letters: TRAIN APPROACHING.

*****

in politics and government, the only thing more pervasive than corruption is incompetence.
corruption is not sexy; it's hardly ever spectacular. it's a daily grind of a multitude of tiny gears. things get done within the machine and in the path of the machine. the only variables are its size, speed and orientation.
nothing is stronger than a guild structure, or pyramid. the upper reaches, the only ones at which accountability is at least asked for and feigned, are utterly disconnected from the daily realities of those at the bottom, the beat cop or the clerk mailing out tax bills.

*****

there's a freight line that runs parallel to the light rail tracks. a slow-moving train sometimes passed by the 22nd street station while he waited. he could see the rails bending and compressing as they were pressed down into the earth by the great grinding wheels.

*****

it's depressing seeing the way real people live. by real i mean real poor.
three women at the police station with two young kids in tow: one was taken in to tell cops how her man had choked her last night. the other two, ignoring the kids, said it was hard for her to do.
they sat in the lobby, sending texts to each other and complaining about their phone bills. one said that when they left, she would go find her roommate at work to get her share of the bill, $45.
both women were fat and shabbily dressed. they looked abused. are they satisfied if they get beat up less by their men than their friends do by theirs? who knows what kind of job they have, if any. health insurance?
maybe bayonne is as big as a country for them. i don't imagine they would even go as far as jersey city except for a custody battle.
one sure thing in bayonne would be to run a liquor store. some things american never change, and hard-bitten destructive alcoholism is one of them.
the third woman hadn't come out by the time i got the reports and left. she was having photos taken of the bruises on her neck.