Unaffected
24 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Beauty, Chicago, Realizations, Travel
The train was making its way rather laboriously through the city. Elevated above and over the street by way of decaying cement underpasses, I could see into second and third story windows from where I stood.
I leaned back against the clear plastic window that separates the standing area from the sitting area. My hands were shoved into my coat pockets, more because I didn’t know what else to do with them than because of the cold.
I stood where I was and watched the world go by.
The train swayed back and forth as we rounded a bend, and I had to put my foot out to steady myself. I had regained my balance, leaning once more against the dingy window, when the train gently ground to a halt.
Three beeps from the overhead speakers were followed by a clear-voiced recording informing us that we were “standing momentarily, waiting for signal clearance”. I silently recited the message along with the recording, absently repeating the oft-heard public transportation announcement.
I turned once again to the window and gazed out at the scene before me, all around me. The train was on a wide sort of natural platform, raised a level or two above street level. Three or four other sets of tracks lay neatly across the platform, gray gravel filling the spaces between the tracks. Beyond the last pair of parallel metal lines, the ground dropped away, leading neatly and steeply to a city street.
Buildings and offices, apartments and stores rose up from the cement walkway, and behind them, a gray sky poured pale white light rather weakly onto the world below.
On the platform right in front of me, little white puffs of untouched snow lined each wooden slat that lay between the train tracks. Each piece of wood sported its own column of perfect white snow, and I studied the wooden slats for a moment or two as I waited for the train to begin rolling again.
I looked from the gray sky to the little snow piles to the buildings neatly lining the slick, wet street. My eyes wandered here and there across the scene in front of me, unconsciously seeking something that I could not find.
What am I looking for? I asked myself, trying ineffectively to drag my eyes away from the cold afternoon view and to focus on something inside the brightly lit train. But my eyes remained transfixed, moving slowly from tracks to sky to street to building to tracks once more.
And then, suddenly, I knew. It’s the beauty that I’m looking for. The beauty that I’m missing. I realized. And a certain kind of sad resign welled up inside me.
Because I know it’s there. I know the sky is beautiful. Know that the city skyline is beautiful, no matter how gloomy it looks. And I most certainly know that perfectly white puffs of snow on the train track slats are beauty almost indescribable.
I know that the beauty’s there. And maybe I even see it. But it doesn’t grab my heart and squeeze it, doesn’t cause me to suck in my breath and stare and stare and stare at the beauty until I think my eyes might pop out of my head.
I wasn’t affected by the beauty this afternoon.
But I want to be.
~Natalia
