'Observation Car' Observations (the end)

Amtrak train “California Zephyr” arriving at the ‘Yard"‘ in Oakland with its one passenger, the writer, March 25 @ 6:30 pm.

9. Looking out the window watching Nevada go by at 60 mph top-speed I see a little bend in the Humboldt River somewhere between Winnemucca and Lovelock. Lots of open spaces and lots of barbed wire fences, an occasional cow.

10. MAGA, the slogan borrowed from Ronald Reagan, gives a picture-book description now of a desperately stupid and stupefied country currently being gamed by a criminal once tutored by Roy Cohn. Wow, and we were once concerned about the slaughter of the buffalo.

11. Look out the same window until the train reaches Reno. De-train, walk for 12 minutes, re-train

12. Cioran’s book The Temptation to Exist. I remember reading it years ago. I’m reading the Norwegian write Dag Solstad at the moment. He’s very funny, a dyspeptic novelist along the lines of Cioran who was an essayist.

13. My cellphone rings in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near Truckee. I don’t take the call.

14. Soon we’ll be down the other side of the mountain, having passed Donner Lake, Colfax.

15. Sacramento, then the next stop Davis, then Martinez, Richmond, Emeryville, the last stop.

16. The last stop, it turns out, is not my last stop. As Amtrak rolls into “The Yard” for repairs in Oakland I discover I’m the last man on the train, having not gotten off the train at the final destination of Emeryville.