Malaise and melancholy

Mexican scrappers and scroungers chatter on the corner, bungee-wrapped duffels and derelict shopping carts in tow.

El viento del norte fuerte y muerde el asfalto de esta tierra se traga el viajero extraviado.

Chinese office-workers with grocery bags retire to their condos, the wrought-iron gate clanging behind them.

The two-tone chime signals the closing doors of the N train and with a low angry boom under the overpass, the steel convoy serpentines its way through the dark wooded path to the next station.

Tired salarymen and women emerge from the pockmarked turnstile house that is the Fort Hamilton station, walls spackled with flea market flyers and lost pet notices.

I join one of the clusters of homebound commuters headed for the Scaturro’s supermarket, calling out orders to the deli counter guys, provisions and foodstuffs for the cold, damp weekend.

This malaise and melancholy this week has taken from me that sense of anticipation and energy for the coming weekend.

Instead I long for window shutters to close and a quiet fireplace to sit in front of, perhaps a subconscious artifact of a Norman Rockwellesque, New England shire at Christmastide, rustic and bucolic, of mahogany tones and hand forged iron.

No more history books or magazines or newspapers. No more television. No more Internet. No more foreign relations studies. No more DHS reports. No more police scanner. No Electric Age extensions of the central nervous system to connect my Faustian mind to the deteriorating world.