tonight on the t

"Excuse me, can I trouble you for a pen?"

He had long hair and glasses, and a copy of _Fight Club_ (the book) on his lap.

"Of course," I replied, and reached into my bag.

He reached across the aisle for the pen and turned to the man in the stocking cap next to him.

"What's your number, man?" Long Hair asked. I tried to tune out as Stocking Cap answered--eavesdropping is a habit I'm looking to break. I spent the next few stops focusing instead on the ring of black dirt around each one of Long Hair's fingernails, the cover of the book, and the geometric shapes on each man's parka. The pen was returned to me with a smile and I watched Long Hair hand _Fight Club_ to Stocking Cap, who was getting up to exit the train at Tufts. They shook hands and the train stopped. As the doors opened, Stocking Cap turned back around, looked at me, and said, very softly,

"Excuse me, but you're beautiful."

Astonished, I smiled, and remembered to say Thank You right right as the doors were closing.

A few more stops ticked by in silence as I toyed with my phone. Long Hair had produced another book from one of his many plastic bags.

Then, out of the blue, I heard, "I wanna thank you."

I stared at Long Hair.

"For the use of your pen, you know. I wanna thank you. I just met that guy [stocking cap] tonight, just now, and he's just getting out of a psych ward, you know. I think he needs to read books. No one fuckin reads anymore, you know? That really frustrates me. I wish I had something better than Palahniuk to give 'im. At least Palahniuk beats Grisham, you know? But still. I wish I had something better. But I'll call him in three days. It takes people on average nine hours to read _Fight Club_. So I'll call him in three days."

Not really knowing what to say, I asked, "Will he be ok?"

"Him? Oh yeah, I think so. He seems to be in good spirits."

Silence.

"Do you read?" Long Hair wanted to know.

"...A little?" I ventured, a lame substitute for the yeah-tons-but-not-cool-stuff answer that immediately sprang to mind.

I don't really remember the next few minutes in any reproducible detail, honestly--he told me about his mom, an Orthodox Jewish theologian who introduced him to Sartre and Camus when he was younger, and monologued for a bit on his interest in French existentialism and the Western Occult tradition.

Then, out of nowhere: "I've been thinking a lot about miscommunication across dialects, you know?"

I couldn't believe my ears.

"I'm talking about accurate communication, you know? That doesn't happen very often."

Well aware that my time with him was limited, I mentally raced through the million questions I wanted to ask him about this. I settled on: "Do you think accurate communication is possible?"

He rubbed his forehead. "Mmm...Yeah. I mean, only through the use of different modes, you know? Like music. Or painting. I paint. Mostly I paint portraits. Especially of jazz artists. I feel like I communicate best through painting, you know? Most accurately."

His stop was nearing and he was gathering the plastic bags. I bit my tongue--I wanted him to keep talking. Instead: "Are you on Facebook?"

"No."

Silence.

"Well, do you communicate electronically? I could send you some images. You could see what I mean."

He wasn't asking for a phone number, so what the hell? I jotted down my email quickly and handed it to him.

"Thanks. I'm Soren. It was nice to meet you."

And with an awkward sidelong handshake, he was gone, and I was left thinking about "accurate communication", painting, multimodal expressions of self, Maria, "the artist who doesn't speak English is no artist", Soren's implicit belief in the merits of post-psych-ward exercises in literacy, his valuing of Palahniuk over Grisham, the bequeathing of _Fight Club_, miscommunication across dialects, and, by extension, translingualism. What, according to Soren, does painting do that language can't? In what ways might multi-modalism be useful to translingualism? Is translingualism even about accuracy, though? Or is accuracy one of those words (like authenticity...ha, ha...) that just drive everyone crazy?

Anyways.

Nothing groundbreaking, obviously--just one of those strange T interactions (made all the more weighty by the fact that I was on my way home from our class) that I don't want to forget, so I am logging it here.