I had an eye appointment on Tuesday. The office was downtown Chicago and since my eyes were to be dilated, I would either have to take an Uber, Taxi or the CTA elevated train. The “El” as it is referred to runs through my neighborhood, about a five-minute walk away. I remember years ago, as a college student a very different sort of El. That progress has improved the train, the new tracks that have recently been built and the overall experience is a testament to mass transit. What hasn’t changed is the plodding pace of such mass transit. But the cost of riding such plodding transit is way cheaper than having a forced conversation with an Uber driver, so I chose the El. What was interesting was that I had to plod along. And in my plodding, I had two choices, to look at my cell phone or look out the window. I chose the latter for the most part. The cellphone has also changed the El ride. People used to talk on the train. Not anymore. The idea now is to sit quietly and as scrunched up as you can and hold the phone at chin level and stare. No more eye contact and no more human interaction. All that plod time channeled into the vast void that is the internet.
I looked out the window as we went from station to station and inside me, there was an odd sensation. Without looking at the phone and looking out the window, I revisited Chicago. I had a chunk of time in which it was permissible to do absolutely nothing. The feeling of it at once filled me with the joy of a seldom given diversion and the nagging dread of time being spent enjoying this diversion. For me, I witnessed new buildings going up, streets that I had forgotten about long ago opening underneath our rumbling passing. A bit of nostalgic memory as we pulled into the Belmont stop. Gone are the surplus army gear stores of my college days. Gone too, the clubs I played at as an aspiring musician. In their place, condos, eateries and a population of people who wouldn’t have been seen back in the day.
My absence from riding the El had the result of a new city that stood over the ruins of the city of my youth. I looked at it all with a sense of wonder and loss. And I realized the value of necessary delays of time.
Sure, I could have whisked down Lake Shore Drive and been dropped off at the door. Instead, I explored with my eyes and ears a land that I forgot. I walked downtown amid the tall buildings, the excitement of being downtown.
For a lot of us, we create these necessary delays in our busy lives. Time to just look at time, slipping through our fingers. We feel it and we see it. It is a chance to recenter and be in the moment. To treasure a bit of being alive and nothing more.
The plodding, rattling, lack of air conditioning, El is a thing of the past. The old hucksters with their gambling games. Even the mumbling homeless person encounter has been limited due to the gates, cards and means of getting onto this new, sophisticated wonder. But it still plods along and perhaps, that is the best thing about it. A gift of time to squander. Or to bury in the vast void of the internet.
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