Control+Alt+Delete

The return to Virginia is almost always by train, almost always late in the week. It is a ride I have taken for over two years, the sights intimately familiar. The rock of the train on rails a comfortable rhythm.

In the coccoon of the car, with quiet business people reading, texting, working, I try to spend my time shedding the layers of gravity and stress that accumulated in the days before. I find the music from somewhere, plug in the ear phones and watch the palette outside me play.

In Gettysburg PA, there is a historic painting, a panorama painted by the french artist Paul Philippoteaux, over 300 feet in circumference and over 40 feet high. It revolves around you as you stand in the center, displaying the horrific July days of the Battle of Gettysburg.

In my train seat, the streets of Philadelphia splay by, unfurling against the window, past the boat houses and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The refineries at the edges of cities, rusting, split by the rails of the train, a view most will never see.

Slums that litter the side rails like discarded cartons. A slice of the American pie left to rot on the counter.

The train ride reveals many things, many sites. Some are beautiful, some are plain. But the single consistent sight is the ever nearing markers that indicate a closeness to home.


The tunnel underneath Baltimore.

The Woodward & Lothrop Building in DC.

The conductor's voice in the overhead speakers: "This is our last and final stop".

Last and final.

I can unplug from work, albeit temporarily. I can hit the Alt+Ctrl+Del keys of my work week and begin the shut-down. I can erase the street scent of the Manhattan sidewalks. I can loosen the tie.

I have stopped being the visitor, the traveler. The stranger, the one-seat at the restaurant goer. The alone in a strange bed sleeper. The unpacker. Repacker.

The one heading into the train station while everybody is heading out.

I can become whole again, with the people and the friends and the family.

I'm a local.

I am home.