End of a Streak

Dateline: Thursday, September 20th, 2007.

On the train outside of Orange . . . or maybe it was Anaheim Canyon. Anyone, somewhere. Hard for me to say as once I have my Peter Gabriel on my iPod and Robert Jordan as my read, I'm pretty well tuned out of the rest of the world. However, folks cursing loudly (though not angrily) tend to get my attention. I see a couple come up the steps and offer a little prayer, as I do when anyone gets on the train, that they don't sit by me.

It's not that I'm unfriendly. Ok, well, I am unfriendly. I pretty much figure the gene pool needs a little chlorine. Mostly, I don't want to be bothered. A bit of this includes anyone taking my leg room by sitting opposite me on the train. That it happens every day doesn't take away from dreaming the impossible dream.

But, as usual, I digress.

Couple gets on the train, and he's swearing like a sailor. Or perhaps like a salty sailor training a green sailor how to swear like a sailor. As mentioned, the lad is not angry, he just seems to use "fuck" in all its iterations as distractors, the same way you and I might use "um" or "like" or George Bush uses "Democractic political statement". It's just a way to take up room while he's thinking of the next thing to say. Interestingly, the guy wore a triple mohawk (I don't know the actual, technical term for this hairstyle), one strip of hair on the top of his head, and then one on either side like a clown from pergatory (not hell, since, again, the guy seemed nice enough). Ahead of him came his girlfriend who had pink hair. Not the expert pink dye-job that, say the eponymous Pink still wore when she was still making a name. No, this was the more traditional, out of a bottle pink that let her blonde show through.

Maybe she meant it to look that way. A very punk rock way of saying, "Yeah, mate, I dye my hair, and I use a crappy dye, because I HATE THE GOVERNMENT."

The train was crowded so Pink sat across from me, while Mohawk sat further down. I didn't really think much of this, since Peter Gabriel had given way to some Heart (yes, I listen to Heart, Bad Animals rocks all), and Trollocs had just attached Rand and his father. Very exciting all around.

A little later, as the train commuter crowd thinned, I realized that Mohawk was now sitting by himself, and Pink was still sitting near me. I did not credit my stellar personality as the reasoning, since she and I hadn't exchanged more than a glance when she sat down. My phone rang, it was Lil asking what I wanted for dinner, and when I closed the phone, I looked out the window to get my bearings and just observe the passing lush, greenery that is the Inland Empire.

"Didja hear he died?" Pink said.

It took me a moment to realize she was addressing my book's author, Robert Jordan, and not the cyclist I had followed for a moment out the window.

"Ohhh, yes. I did hear. He'd been sick for awhile."

"I saw him at Comicon about . . . three years ago when he announced he had the disease."

Wow, her kung fu was strong. Not only was she clearly not with Mohawk, but she'd read Jordan and she attended cons. My impression of Pink went up about fifty stories.

It occurs to me that there is this link amongst readers of a particular writer that doesn't exist between, say, fans of a particular singer/group or of a particular movie/director/actor/actress. If you read a series, typically, you enjoy the writer, who is a one man/woman show. Jordan, Tolkien, Swann, Rowling, Lewis, McCaffrey, Hamilton, King. Pretty much, it's their deal, their make or break, their voice, their thoughts, their characters down on the page that we love, hate, love to hate, or hate to love. No back-up singers, no make-up artists, just them, the empty page, and the world they create out of it all. Sharing in that is an experience in ways deeper than that of a movie, sharper and more clear than the "perfect" four-minute she-understands-me! song. Fans of the author tend to be of the same mind (though for different reasons).

Pink and I had shared that moment of grief together born out of sharing the adventures Robert Jordan had crafted.

It also occured to me that I can be wrong, dead, dead, dead wrong about people. Well, not about Mohawk, who passed out over one of the tables before we hit my stop. But still, people.