Train yesterday/today

Yesterday morning, the traincar was all stillness, like a temple lumbering over the rails, like a body of water that has never known agitation.

Today, it is all motion, inside and out; a den of idiosyncrasy:

A man speaking awful fast about new fibre optic TV

A woman who tears the newspaper, long and luxuriously, over and over, as if everything is fascinating

A right snoring fellow, short enough to lay himself flat out on the seats, startling with his snorts

This lady loves her dentist, hates her hygenist

This guy's coughs are classic cigarette + chest cold & may only lift in May

And remarkably, I'm drifting along in peace over all of it, banana peel draped over my thigh, unopened yogurt in dangling hand, part of the fresco, nodding off myself

Letting the glorious machine run all the way downtown in its vivid completeness.

In the evening, two dudes sit facing one another, each with a hot, fragrant pail of poutine, and I feel like asking them:

Where were you guys this morning?

The U.S. Election: What Is The 6th?

Today, I turn 38. And they're going to the polls down south to elect a President.

A few work colleagues and I wondered about my birthday + US Presidential election history, and honestly I didn't know a lot about it. 

So, in the spirit of the day, I dug up a few things (with the help of Wikipedia).

Since 1848, the beginning of single US Presidential election dates across all states...here's what's happened in Presidential elections falling on November 6:
 
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, R, beat three opponents for his first election as President. Momentous, and a watershed moment for the United States and its practice of slavery...a trigger for southern secession and eventual civil war. 
 
1888, Benjamin Harrison, R, defeats incumbent Grover Cleveland, D, in the electoral college...but Cleveland won the Popular Vote! And would be back! This election formed the backdrop for the 1968 Disney musical film 'The One And Only Original Family Band!' Eh? Songs by the Sherman brothers? Yeah.
 
1900, William McKinley, R, re-elected, over William Jennings Bryan, D. Bryan was unsuccessful in his second attempt to beat McKinley, who would be assassinated the following September, in Buffalo, as the old 'White House Blues' goes.

1928, Herbert Hoover, R, beats Al Smith, D. Al Smith's Big Problem? Anti-Catholic sentiment. There was apparently a current of paranoia that if Smith won the White House, the Pope would come and rule the US from a fortified location in Washington. Whoooa!
 
1956 - Dwight D. Eisenhower, R, beats Adlai Stevenson, D, earning re-election. A rematch of 1952 - and the most recent rematch to this day. They still liked Ike. (Sorry, couldn't resist)
 
1984 - Ronald Reagan, R, re-elected by a landslide over Walter Mondale, D. Reagan won the biggest total of electoral votes of any Presidential candidate (525 out of 538).
 
...and that brings us to...today.

If Barack Obama wins re-election, he'll be the first Democrat to notch a Presidential election victory on a November 6th. So there's that.

But the 6th is, after all, just the 6th.

What is a pattern?

Anything can happen.

I could be born, an unimagined soul, alongside countless others.

An entire country could take a step toward a widely-imagined future.

We'll read tea leaves, blow out candles, and carry on.