No Such Thing as a Free Ride?

I’ve just worked a fifteen hour day. I want it all to end. I want to end it all.

I take the 8:54 train out of Metropark, hoping to get to Princeton Junction in time to catch the 9:25 bus into town. I’m in luck. We get in at 9:24.

Just as we get there, the son-of-a-bitch bus driver pulls away. In other words, he sees a whole trainload of commuters come in, then leaves a minute early. I curse as I watch him go, sympathizing briefly with every terrorist who’s ever lived. Continue reading

Valley of the Ghosts

Facebook does this thing where they exhume something you posted on this day, x years ago, just to remind you that you did: “You have memories on this day,” it helpfully intones. Sometimes you want to be reminded, sometimes not, and sometimes you can’t be sure. This one, I guess, falls into the third category. It was the midpoint of a long walk I took on June 10, 2016, which fell during Ramadan, when I was fasting. I was living at the time in Abu Dis in the West Bank, just east of Jerusalem. It was either a day off from teaching, or I was just done teaching, so I started walking, on a whim, from Abu Dis to the neighboring town of Eizariya. Continue reading