The train was five minutes behind schedule. There was almost no one on the train, and scantily anyone aware of the delay besides myself. Two old men sat in the front of the car, seemingly deep in their own thoughts with one leaning on his cane and one sprawled against the burgundy seats. Upon closer inspection one could tell that they were merely asleep after a slow journey on this line from Paterson. A mother and her child sat a few rows ahead of me, speaking their own language to each other in their own little world. The little boy enjoyed the sights of the yard we were rolling through and his mother beamed at his joy, though it had little effect on the dreary mood of the car. Outside the streaked window, it was May and the trees had begun to bud, and Hoboken sat still against the bright blue sky. People moved in the distance though no detail could be met, no one would want to hang around a train yard. The train finally made it under the station shed, making it so dark that it could be anytime of day as our nearly empty train joined a long line of fully empty trains.
I rushed down the steps at the end of the car to make it onto the low platform, everyone else behind me as I rushed down towards the ferries. It had been years since I was last there, though it hadnât changed at all with huge trains waiting to whisk away the few people that would board them. The yellow lights of the huge departure board displayed the lack of departures for the middle of a weekday, just when the rush would start around four thirty. Despite the lack of trains the board was still a beauty, old lettering and back lighting straight out of the seventies, which was probably the last time anyone cared about what happened in this place. When I turned back away from the board all of my fellow former passengers were gone, probably down in the PATH tunnels waiting to leave on a train that would rather wait until all of Hoboken got on. People were waiting for coffee and reading the paper at the small stalls in the dark green walls of the terminal building. The doors to the lobby were adorned with gilded handles harkening back to the terminalâs origins, seemingly the only thing the place could boast about anymore. Boast they should however, the lobby was a masterpiece with large hanging bulbs affixed to the crown mold surrounding the terracotta tiled ceiling. Wooden windows lead to ticket booths with windows so clean the black and white tiles of the floor made the workers inside look like a silent film. The small offices served no one however, and the workers inside seemed to fit better in a vintage photograph than reality. Stairs at the far end lead to more offices beyond the sturdy and tall wooden waiting benches in front of me, and below the stairs was my destination, the ferry slips. I walked through the lobby like a King in his court, though the desolate nature of the hobby perhaps made me more like Hades.
As the gilded handles of the doors on the other end greeted me, the austacious lights of the lobby said their goodbyes. The ferry slips were much darker than the terminal, despite being nominally outside. Narrow walkways extended out into the water with small ordenmants of metal on either side, though no ships were present to meet them. The departures board said that they were at most every half hour, so assuming that I had just missed one I moved to look out across the hudson. Manhattan gleamed in the distance, the buildings were playing king of the hill with each other to see would reign supreme. Claying their way ever higher to the Heavens, Olympus, or any other greater plane couldnât be decided. The water was blue under the sun, but more of a gray in actuality. It lapped against the pier pillars, and beyond that the wall that the building sat on. Little waves crashed and retreated, over and over and over, the same splash everytime could be heard from every pillar and every surface that could ever be hit. As I watched the water and its flows, it did what was expected of it everytime, until I caught a wave with no origin crashing sideways into another one. Vortexes then formed all around the pillars as the water decided to travel as it may without any regard for physical laws. A stream of yellow light then appeared on the slips, as I looked back towards the city the light of a setting sun was being reflected back across the river towards the terminal. A ferry could never realistically travel in such treacherous waters I thought, I shouldâve just taken the PATH.
I rushed back inside to find my way to the PATH entrance, but scant signage proved useful in keeping me in such a useless building. The lobby was busier now than it was before, with people standing about, unmoving while they stared at nothing in particular. They were not fiance types in suits, but not the poor homeless of Penn Station either, far too regular for the fanciful lobby. I was the only one moving as I moved towards the doors labelled âexitâ, as if they were too shy to even look one in the eye. A man lit a cigarette as I was about to exit the building, I didnât think anything of it. The terminal was a castle of evergreen metal outside, with a large clocktower dwarfed by the more modern buildings across the river and farther down in Jersey City. âLACKAWANNA RRâ was written in large letters above the entrance, though a few of the letters decided to take an evening off when their lights were most important. Police cars were parked in front of the barren square, though no human could be seen anywhere, just their built creations. No official sign for PATH trains was anywhere to be seen, but a small piece of printer paper had an arrow pointing towards a staircase on one side, and an apartment listing on the other, as it was perpetually close to falling from its tape. The staircase was so unimportant that it must have made any man who walked down it feel like a lesser rat. The tiled walls were dirtier than those in the Lincoln Tunnel, and the floor looked like a congelement of puke and misery with cheap concrete. As I walked along the corridor it turned and turned back on itself, I passed a homeless man and gave him the quarters in my pocket, but I thought I had just seen him before so I have him a five on top of that. I kept going, following the singular line of green tiles that contrasted the pissed stained yellow ones. I came across a staircase, it led back up to the barren square I was in before, still lonely, but now with a purple sky in the background. I had thought New Jersey faced the east, but maybe they were having some sort of special event.
I somehow found myself on a PATH training bound for midtown, the car was packed and the doors were still open. Everyone was silent as everything was in Hoboken, all staring into their own worlds. An old woman sat in her fancy hat at the end of the bench, her eyes were hidden in her glasses but it was obvious that she was staring out the window. Her hands were sad as was her posture, hunched over like everyone on the train would attack her at any minute. Everyoneâs posture was sad, hunched like cold and hungry dogs in the commercials all while wearing large coats and holding huge bags like runaways in a teen drama. We arrived at Christopher Street Station and a good amount of people got off, while no one got on. Across from me was a man with a large duffel bag, he wore three coats and the densest pair of jeans I had ever seen. He wore headphones, but no sound could be heard from them. His eyes were closed though he wasnât asleep, he seemed to be rocking back and forth like he was praying. He gripped the bag strongly, his hand seemed to be bleeding from the dig of his finger nails. Despite all of this his face was as serene as anyone elseâs, everyone looked like a stoic subject in a painting. The lighting helped this image as it flickered on and off, illuminating and reilluminating the subjects as they sat in their repose. The ads on the car wall spoke of help for New Yorkerâs through some new shoe or a new kind of taxi company, but they didnât draw the eye of anyone on board. The journey of the city is eternal, its struggles superseding anything material for that was the city in its birth and it will be the city in its death.
The train arrived back in Hoboken sometime later, I mustâve been distracted by some hustlers selling candy or CDs or some other oddity. The waiting area sat at the head of the trains as they stared you down, trying to convince anyone to choose them over the identical rolling stock next to it, destinations differed though all were the same. I boarded one with red seats and end car stairs as a light flurry began to fall. The train was warm with cold passengers, its conductures rushed up and down the aisles checking tickets that could never pay by themselves to have the train run. A young family sat near me as I stared out the streaky window at the lights of Hoboken with the snow falling in front of them. We departed five minutes late.
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
jbbartram-illu