overheard_on_the_train epitome of incomprehensibility A specific overheard_in_conversation because I'm on trains a lot. On the commuter train heading home, four girls - early college age or late high school - had better dialogue than I could write. How do I know? I was writing dialogue as they talked, a scene for the slow-gathering novel. Distracted, already tired from a busy_day, I paused to marginalize some of the words eavesdropped from the seat in front of mine. Marginalize in a nice way, I hope. In a literal way, at least. See, it wasn't just that I thought the kids' words were naïve and therefore cute - a little bit, okay, but also witty, curious, knowledge-seeking. They all seemed friendly with each other, too, not competitive or mocking. Anyway: "Okay, what 'gen' are we?" "Gen Z." "Millennial is the one before us." "Are millennials Gen Y?" "Yes, but they like to call themselves millennials." "...Why is a 'generation' every 15 years?" (That's what I ask, too! Double that, and you've got a better average for *actual* generations.) Talk about generations led to those of the British royal family: "So was Queen Elizabeth the greatest generation?" "What's his name? The king, the one who cheated on Diana." "Charles." "There are probably many Charleses and Elizabeths." About Prince Phillip: "He was assassinated." "What??" Two or three voices at once. One of them: "No, he was like 90. He was OLD." And, somewhat, randomly: "Didn't Harry have a crush on Rihanna?" 250426 ... e_o_i Blurk, I don't know why that comma appeared after "somewhat." 250426 ... raze you're making me wish i'd been paying_attention to what other people were saying the last time i was blathing_on_a_train. that was a strange weekend. i think the books outweighed the clothes in my suitcase. "the executioner's song" was one of the things i brought with me. the assia wevill biography "lover of unreason" might have been in there too. the only thing i read was david small's "stitches". red was a much lonelier place at the time. i think you were the only other person still around by then. i drank an entire pot of coffee in one sitting and tried to conjure scenes from the lives of people i couldn't see through the glass that lined the hotel facing mine. in my dreams, a woman i'd never met murdered all my friends. she spoke of the erotic properties of diced onions. i mourned the absence of a man i barely knew. in a documentary that dug into his death, someone said, "we all pool our hands. we did him proud." at_the_train_station i could feel the foot i almost broke buckling beneath my weight. when i got home, i caught myself about to wash my face with toothpaste. my mind was somewhere else and everywhere at once. anyway. 250426 ... e_o_i raze, I just read the beginning of that blathe and your snippets of images are fantastic. Absolutely, you were paying attention to things worth recording. Don't sell yourself short. Buy yourself tall! (What does that mean? I don't know. But seriously, those pieces are really good, as is the looked-back-on and condensed version of the trip you just gave.) You also got me thinking: I probably pay less attention to others' talk on longer train rides than on short ones. My mind seems more likely to go "ambient dialogue, tune out," but I'll override this if I hear something interesting. Like on one of my Toronto trips, a woman was telling her seatmate about her mystical worldview of Mount_Shasta and other things. Some of this seemed silly, but even (especially?) the silly things were fascinating. 250426 ... e_o_i One boy to another, "Do you have, like, infinite time?" (I don't know if they were talking about real_life or a game. I glanced over and they were wearing school uniforms, both holding phones. This was the train that left downtown at 3:10, so maybe they ended school early on Friday and it seemed like large swaths of time stretched before them.) 250530 what's it to you? who go blather from