A Pilgrim’s Digression

Commuting to work on a train at 6 AM is usually a quiet, almost dream-like experience. One might hear the faint thump of someone’s music through their headphones, but rarely does a cellphone ring that early, and even more rarely does anyone speak. One can look around the train and see people dozing uncomfortably or reading silently. No one speaks. We are all still partly asleep and dreaming.

Metro stations are no different, though a little noisier. There is the constant, dimly heard roar of trains in tunnels, and the occasional annoying PA announcement: “Is that your bag? Four simple words that can make all the difference. Please, if you see an unattended bag on a metro train, just ask,’Is that your bag?’ If no one claims the bag, please report it promptly to a Metro employee.” But generally, all is quiet.

People look dazed, as if waking from sleep to find themselves fully dressed and standing in the Metro station waiting for the train. And you may ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’ However, no one speaks, suppressing their own feelings of dislocation and jarring sleep deprivation in favor of not being judged for daring to break the silence.

Today, however, while waiting at Metro Center for the next orange line train towards New Carrolton, I was treated to what I first supposed was just a “random crazy” as I’ve come to think of them.

He rode down the escalator near where I was standing, and at first I noted only that he was crippled. He walked with the jerky, wild gate of someone who has little muscle control over their legs. He used a metal cane for support. He was dressed normally in khaki shorts, a polo shirt, a ball cap with headphones over it; he wore New Balance tennis shoes with Wilson ankle-length socks. He looked like any of the tourists one sees around Washington in the summer. He was even carrying a bag from the duty free shop at the airport.

But he was talking to himself. And not just talking…he was carrying on an intense conversation about something that animated his face and resulted in wild hand gestures and occasional sweeps of his cane.

He walked over to the side of the escalator where a number of people were leaning, and he stood against the escalator and let the wall support him as he slid down to the floor where he sat sprawled, his legs wide. He still held the cane up and motioned with it occasionally, but I noted that when people walked by he was more restrained. At first I thought he might hit or trip someone with it as they passed, which would have probably been more unfortunate for him than the person he accidentally hit.

I couldn’t hear anything that he was saying. People who had been leaning against the escalator began looking at him and slowly drifting away. A man dressed in the blue polo shirt and blue pants of an Architect of the Capitol employee noticed that the crazy man was eyeing his red and white Igloo cooler in which, no doubt, his lunch was packed. He picked up the cooler and moved farther down the platform.

Finally, when the train came, people watched to see which door the man was going through, and they deliberately boarded through the door farthest from him. I was rather intrigued, though. Mostly I just wanted to know what he was saying. I stood near him as he waited for the door to open. He was still talking; I could not understand what he was saying. When the door opened, we both got on.

He sat down in a seat near the door and I sat across from him. He happened to sit beside a woman, who was confused by his talking and immediately said, “Excuse me?” Apparently she thought he had said something to her. He turned to her earnestly, held up one of the free newspapers he had picked up at a Metro entrance, pointed at the paper and said, “This is a train.”

The woman said, “Oh,” and looked at him for a moment as his words became even more disassociated from reality and descended into jibberish. He was talking to her with quite a bit of seriousness, but I could not understand him, and I know she could not understand him either. Eventually, she stopped looking at him and went back to a book she was reading. He kept looking at her and talking just as if she were still participating in the conversation.

His voice had the slurred sound of someone with some degree of mental retardation, but then suddenly he would speak as clearly and plainly as you or I. Only the words seemed to have no connection with reality.

Who was this person? He looked clean and well-cared for. His socks matched and were quite white, obviously recently laundered. If he had been quiet, no one would have known the difference. He would have passed for any one of us ’sane’ people.

Finally, in one of those ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this moments,’ I looked over at him and said, “Are you OK? Do you need help?”

He looked at me and said plainly, “I waited for the 80 bus but it never came.”

“Oh,” I said. “Are you lost? Do you need help finding your way?”

“I slept all night. Got up,” he replied.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Alzheimers,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say to that. Did he have Alzheimers? His symptoms were a little like what I’ve experienced with people in my family who have had Alzheimers. But dementia all looks the same, really, and he didn’t look old enough even for early-onset Alzheimers. He looked no older than myself.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I didn’t say anything, and he babbled on in jibberish. I could make out a few words and phrases here and there–”…took a taxi…walked all the way down…and he said to me…” He seemed perfectly happy, undisturbed by anything that was happening in his mind, or that had happened in reality–say, missing the 80 bus. He smiled pleasantly and kept on talking.

People were looking at both of us now, as if my talking to him gave them permission to stare.

Finally, I tried to interrupt his jolly, gibbering banter: “Are you alright? Do you need help?”

“When I was a boy we spent whole weeks at the ocean,” he replied.

“That must have been pleasant,” I said.

“Meritorious service award,” he added.

There is nothing more worth recounting. My stop was near, and suddenly I began fearing that I had made a mistake in talking to him. What if he got off at my stop and followed me? Should I say something to a Metro employee?

Then I dismissed my fear. He didn’t seem dangerous; I just had a feeling about him that he was harmless. If he got off the train with me, all the better. I could mention it to a Metro employee. Honestly, I thought he seemed like the kind of mentally ill person that someone is caring for, who somehow wandered off–not a danger to anyone, but probably in danger himself.

However, when I got off the train, he stayed aboard. He did not even acknowledge my leaving. I rode the escalator up from the platform, and I considered going to the station office and mentioning the man to someone there. But what would they say? The Metro police and station managers sit in an enclosed booth to protect themselves from the sane and insane alike, rarely leaving the confines of their cage. Speaking to them through the glass is like speaking to the Guardian of the Emerald City Gates through a small hole in the door: “Now, state your business!” “We want to see the wizard.” “The wizard? But no one has ever seen the great Oz!” etc.

I stood for a moment just inside the turnstiles, trying to decide whether to say something. I could see the Metro employee inside the booth looking at me warily, as if contemplating whether to declare a state of emergency and call for S.W.A.T. backup. They always look on edge, as if ready to shoot you or or otherwise take you down for the safety and efficiency of the Metro rail system.

Finally, I went up to the glass, put my mouth close to the metal grill through which voices are supposed to pass, and said, “There was a man on the train I am worried about.”

I didn’t know how else to say it, even knowing how foolish it sounded.

“What?” The woman said, faintly and tinnily.

“I said, ‘there’s a man on the train I’m worried about.’ He was talking to himself, but he didn’t look like a crazy homeless person. I think he might need someone to help him.”

The woman said something sharply I couldn’t understand. It was like we were talking to each other through tin cans on a string.

“What?” I said, turning my head so that my ear was nearer the metal grate in the glass.

“I said, ‘We can’t worry about every crazy person that rides Metro.’ Was he a danger to others?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Was he carrying a suspicious package?”

“No, just a bag from a duty free store.”

“Forget it. Go to work,” she said dismissively.

So, I went to work. But I did not forget.

If insanity is doing the same thing compulsively, over and over, despite the fact that it does not make us any happier and perhaps only worsens our lot, I sometimes think we’ve got it all backwards about who is really at loose ends mentally, in this world. To live in a fugue of dementia sometimes seems a better option than living in the sane world of routine disregard of others.

One could draw numerous analogies, from war to murder to the mundane, mind-numbing routine of day to day life for many, as examples of the insanity of the sane. To some extent we all live in our own private asylum, we just don’t talk about it. And so no one knows. Yet when another inmate of the asylum speaks, we feel secretly superior. We, at least, keep it all inside.

Passengers on the train close their eyes, go back to sleep. The madman’s talk is just jibberish. We’ve got the day at work to think about, a dozen or more tasks that are important today, but forgotten tomorrow. And when we get off work, we have whatever relaxes us in the evening–the routine of free time: reading, TV, alcohol, video games, masturbation. Whatever takes our mind off our mind.