Dan Fishback: Finding inspiration on the way to New York

When you take Regional Rail to New York, it's like a Disney ride of nearly opaque surfaces. At every stop, the suggestion of civilization: just storefronts and traffic lights. Fragments. And before that, just names: Rahway, Elizabeth, Princeton Junction...

I have virtually no idea what happens beyond these vague and mysterious horizons, though I've heard a few stories. Apparently, beyond the "Princeton Junction" sign is a university with lots of old buildings, trimmed grass and rich white men. They say it's a lot like Penn, only worse somehow.

I hear very different things about Newark. Newark, they tell me, is crumbling. Newark is falling apart. But Newark I cannot see from my moving window. Just the sign, some storefronts, some traffic lights...

So, as you can see, New Jersey is a complete mystery to me. At any given point along the train tracks, it could be supper clubs or crack houses. It could be mutant alligators for all I know -- all I can do is look out the window.

And yet, I've never felt at all helpless in my ignorance. Quite the opposite -- I've always felt masterful, passing these towns. They belong to me. I can make them up as I go along.

I like to think that Rahway is a musical place -- a rhythmic place, where people dance and hum to themselves as they walk down the street. The last time I stopped at Rahway, I was sitting there, just sort of staring out the window, when I was startled by a sudden, inexplicable noise. It was a voice! -- a tiny, muffled voice... and it was coming...

...from inside of my chest!

This seemed strange -- yes -- but entirely plausible, since I detected it so plainly, so viscerally...

I imagined a little gnome... with a vocoder...

It was singing: "Howww am IIII suppoooosed to liiiive withouuuut youuuu?!" and I thought, "I - I - I don't know...!" I tried to muster up an answer, but the voice sort of cackled to a halt as the woman behind me screamed, "Yolanda, you're too much, you crazy bitch!"

I swung around to see this woman who was on a first name basis with the gnome inside my chest... and I saw that she was... talking on her cell phone...

Yolanda started singing again... but, this time, she was clearly coming from that piece of plastic. I turned around and slunk into my seat...

How exciting it had been -- for that brief moment -- to think that I was possessed by a voice... to think that something strange and unusual could come from inside of me... to think that anything could come from inside of me. And all the while it was just Yolanda...

...Yolanda! Howww am IIII suppoooosed to liiiive withouuuut youuuu?!

That's Rahway. That's Rahway to me.

Philadelphia? I don't know, I've been here too long. I've seen too much. I don't know Philadelphia at all.

So I'm moving to New York...

"Start spreading the news... I'm leaving today... I want to be a part of it..." More and more, I get the feeling that there's no New York to know -- no New York beyond the imagination of New Yorkers. But then I think about Yolanda, and I wonder who or what is really imagining all of this...

The other day, I was playing with a 6-month-old baby. She was sucking on my keychain -- a piece of plastic that reads, "If it weren't for boys, I'd quit school." I bought it because it was such a lie. But the baby didn't care about irony -- she liked its glittery sheen, its smooth texture, its existence. She stuck two fingers up my nose and stared awestruck at my shoulder.

As I held her in my lap, her 3-year-old brother dropped a pretzel and watched it shatter into pieces. He cried and cried, and wouldn't stop crying until he was presented with a new, whole pretzel, perfectly intact. His mother explained that he is deeply concerned with the structural integrity of worldly objects. Crumbling upsets him, as does shattering. His world is capricious, ecstatic. And so the universe lives through him. The pretzel could not cry, so he offered his own tears.

Suddenly, some blocks fell off a shelf, and his baby sister swung her head around to hear the crash. She began to scream, so I picked her up and walked into an empty room, singing softly in her ear... "When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go... downtown..." Settling down, she slid my mailbox key into her mouth, like she wanted to unlock her head.

A nearby window beckoned her gaze, performing a drama of passing cars. Sucking on my key, staring at the display, she looked wily, determined. "Everything," I whispered into her ear, "is going to be OK."

Dan Fishback is a 2003 College graduate from Olney, Md.

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