Labor Day - actually, the Sunday before Labor Day - was spent in Rockland, as I said before. The weather was perfect, breathtaking; almost - almost - making up for all of the scrabulous weekends that had gone before it, for almost the entire Summer.
I'd had to work Saturday, a very productive and enjoyable session. For better or ill it kept me from being in the mix of Saltwater Tango from the beginning. Had it been a more formal occasion - had there been any hint of formality from the beginning - I might have reacted differently.
But, everyone was so comfortable with each other by Sunday that a powerful sense of intrusion overcame me. A great part of my psyche is invested in seeing myself as an "other". This feeling has been with me from early, early childhood.
This can be a tremendous source of strength. My imagination is free to see outside corners, around boxes - something like that. It's hard to institutionalize myself purely for the sake of institutionalization.
This doesn't mean being insensitive to any team I'm on - I'm just an individual first, a team member second - a team is a context for me to be myself.
But in social situations this is sometimes a little hard to pull off. Like last Sunday.
So, rather than suffer from my own discomfort (I'm sure everyone else was OK with me, I just wasn't OK with myself being there) I hied my way out of there.
And that brings us to the subject of this particular post.
Since childhood, comma, I've also had a fascination with trains and train tracks, switches and gondola cars. I suppose it all traces back to my uncle Louis Benge, on my dad's side, the one who married Aunt Aunie (or Aunniseekit, to use the full Cherokee).
Uncle Louis worked for the Midland Valley Railroad as a brakeman. It was he who gave me a genuine brakeman's lantern when I was a child; two bulbs, red and white on the bottom, a space for a huge nine-volt battery inside, which we could never afford to fill.
There was a train track in our neighborhood in Tulsa, the Midland Valley line running behind Lee School and into downtown.
I loved walking it, looking at the bridge and ladders crossing 15th Street, the incredible switches that moved whole sections of track.
So saying, I'd noticed the Maine Eastern Railroad yard - or more of a "wide spot" - from the street leading to and from the tango site and my digs in Rockland. Couldn't resist. There was brilliant sun, lots of old metal to see, an engine, tank cars, a snow plow and a genuine roundhouse with a table.
It was lovely - and engaging in a solitary way. Enough so that I'd had my fill of being by myself and was ready for the socialization of the evening. My pal Adira had to drag me into the mix but it was easy to cross that line back into the human race.
There are many places for me to be - with my friends, my new co-workers, my close friends and with myself. It has to be that way or I cannot be the person I'm capable of.
If there is a simpler way to live one's life, I don't think I have time to hear it.
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