Here lies Trigorin. He was a good writer, but not as good as Turgenev.
At the urging of one of my professors this semester, I've been reading Chekhov and maybe it's merely heightened awareness of the cosmic choreography attending this semester, but there's a startling resonance, I find, in what he writes and what I'm currently going through at this point in my life.
For the past few Mondays (and conceivably for the next 10 or so), I've been waking up at 4.30 AM, my affairs packed and readied the night prior. I catch a 5.15 bus, then at around 5.25, transfer to another bus that spirits me to the train station. I end up arriving at work anywhere from 90 minutes to an hour earlier, but because no one has really entered the floor yet, I can use the quiet to catch up on reading or sometimes to get ahead of it, to polish pages for this week or to get a headstart on next week's travaux.
But my principal consolation in this rather masochistic ritual (outside of the attendant discipline I've managed to foster) is that around 6.30 while we're speeding our way through Bridgeport and on our way to Stamford, I get to watch the sun rise from my window. I try to find a seat on the eastward-facing side of the train and determine every time to remain awake for the slow spectacle.
Reading about Chekhov's love of nature and the Russian countryside and how it reinvigorated him, how it refreshed his spirit, how it cleansed him of the emotionally poisonous smog he'd ingested in the cities, I find myself experiencing the same. New York is not Moscow, and New England is not the Russian countryside, but I imagine that on some mornings when the winter is clear and absent of precipitation, before the world has begun and everything is quiet, a man can stare out a window and have his soul refreshed.
For the past few Mondays (and conceivably for the next 10 or so), I've been waking up at 4.30 AM, my affairs packed and readied the night prior. I catch a 5.15 bus, then at around 5.25, transfer to another bus that spirits me to the train station. I end up arriving at work anywhere from 90 minutes to an hour earlier, but because no one has really entered the floor yet, I can use the quiet to catch up on reading or sometimes to get ahead of it, to polish pages for this week or to get a headstart on next week's travaux.
But my principal consolation in this rather masochistic ritual (outside of the attendant discipline I've managed to foster) is that around 6.30 while we're speeding our way through Bridgeport and on our way to Stamford, I get to watch the sun rise from my window. I try to find a seat on the eastward-facing side of the train and determine every time to remain awake for the slow spectacle.
Reading about Chekhov's love of nature and the Russian countryside and how it reinvigorated him, how it refreshed his spirit, how it cleansed him of the emotionally poisonous smog he'd ingested in the cities, I find myself experiencing the same. New York is not Moscow, and New England is not the Russian countryside, but I imagine that on some mornings when the winter is clear and absent of precipitation, before the world has begun and everything is quiet, a man can stare out a window and have his soul refreshed.