After a three hour delay, we’re now inching down the track on the way to Raton, NM. From there, I will catch a bus to Denver tomorrow afternoon. I’ve never felt so compulsive about writing as I did today, away from my computer until now, yet I am so thoroughly exhausted, my brain consumed in an anxious haze, that I have nothing to relate. In my sleeper car, but the room is sticky hot due to the lack of electricity during the delay (they were changing out our locomotive because someone pulled the emergency brake twice from Chicago to KC while the train was at full speed – not good), and though I’m horizontal, the permanent headrest for the seat in its upright position is at just the wrong height and is exceedingly itchy and always in the way of a comfortable position. I really just want to go to sleep, want to wake up and be out of the Midwest, the soupy boredom proved to be a bit wrenching, walking around in nothingness no less than disorienting, stultifying. I am fighting the urge to let the expletives fly, to unleash a savage and terrible written retribution for what I’m feeling right now, but fuck it, I’d rather just shut my eyes.
The Raton Pass is the highest point on the Santa Fe Trail, just south of the Colorado border. It’s up at about 7,600 ft., and I’m very much looking forward to being up out of this Middle American morass. Really, it’s not personal. Just get me the fuck to the mountains.
Tomorrow, I promise.
