Landscape with Skull

After a lifetime of dependence on a pre-set alarm as the means of heralding morning, he suddenly enters a new phase in which he finds himself awake, listening to the chorus of birdsong that greets a dawn prying itself inexorably from night, long before the chimes of his alarm are due to sound. He rises and makes his way item by item through the routine — the dog walk, the coffee brew, the transport of household waste to the curb on the municipal schedule — and finds himself farther and farther down the list before it registers that the racket suddenly vying for attention over the aerated whoosh of tap water is the alarm.  

The morning proceeds. A leisurely morning, in which nothing other than morning is attended to.  At length, there’s no more putting it off.  He must start for the day.  It’s getting to be less and less frequently that he chooses public transportation to the station, opting instead to plug in the music and make a slow, meditative course on foot— an almost straight path to the station through back streets and parking lots that is partly designed to compensate for his reluctance to shake leisure, but that in its stillness prolongs the detachment from the day.  

I'm a fan

Crossing over the highway and a plot of railroad tracks that accompany each other for this stretch to and from the city in parallel tracts for passenger trains, freight trains and the metro train he’s bound for, he finds himself at the park-like setting of the civically tasteful station.  On the platform, he finds himself almost hoping for some kind of trouble on the line that would accommodate the lack of hurry he himself is in, in spite of his ostensible mission to hasten to work.  It's not a long shot, but after a year of overdue maintenance on the system, it's become a rarer thing and most mornings he's soon aboard and on his way.

The train’s route is above ground for the first three stations and he can’t resist soaking in the view from his window seat, a view that affords him a privileged glimpse at life from the alley.  Pristine back yards, utilitarian sheds and a changing array of detritus that interlopers have brought in in the middle of the night taking advantage of this oasis of seclusion so close to the city limits,  and that remain only as long as they're not found, including once or twice a year,  a new, wheel-less, stripped car on blocks tucked away from the homes behind fences and shrubbery.  The train traverses the invisible border into the city, and makes its first stop.  Soon, after crossing the river and passing by the power plant and a public driving range and golf course, it descends into the tunnel.

Another work of K.O.R. aka Creak, I think.  It reads: Welcome to Plead Guilty County Murderland.

Having transferred several stops in within the system’s bowels to change to a northerly direction, he purposely rides one stop beyond the logical one, preferring a station beyond the edge of center, a yet-to-be up-and-coming district that is still mostly down-and-out.  Emerging again into the light of day and whatever weather the day has in stock, he makes his way down the city streets, past vacant vintage storefronts and a modest brick apartment building of utilitarian design from an era when housing and urban development were a priority-- a nearly empty landscape now except for a smoker parked on a stoop here, there a woman making her slow way down the sidewalk with the aid of a walker.  The cranes visible from this vantage above the skyline from sprawling, stalling construction just beyond the neighborhood are still no immediate threat.

He crosses a major avenue— the dividing line into the gleaming zone in which he soon finds the glass tower of his office.  As he makes his way beside the empty outdoor tables of brand new restaurants, and past the windows of the gym behind which patrons furiously pedalling their stationary bikes try not to see him, he’s keenly aware that the best part of the day is already behind him.  He exits the street and lets the building swallow him.