Out of Order: On the Way to Rubber Room #8 & 9

It starts to snow as I wait for the Saturday evening train. Talk about variations on a theme: from the end of December through now, we've had every kind of snow - heavy, wet flakes; powder; fluff; silent snow insulating all sound, terrible, freezing rain... 

There is something reminiscent of Chekhov while I wait for the train, with the new snow falling and yesterday's snow lying between the tracks as far as the eye can see.

The weekend train is festive.  People are on the way to the theatre.  They discuss the plays they are going to see: The Merchant of Venice, the dangerous Spider Man...

Across the aisle from me, in Chekhov fashion, a blonde from the Ukraine reads her book, legs crossed at the knee, right foot far forward, so the slipper-type shoe hangs downward from her toes, revealing her bare foot.  She is reading silently while the landscape rushes by the train window, just as she might in a Chekhov story.  

Behind her an Asian woman with a large brown leather bag alternately reads a bible and turns to her cell phone and taps out a message, back and forth, back and forth, one to the other, as if she is sending evangelical messages out to the world.

A man with a severe haircut is holding too many newspapers.  He spreads them out on the chair as if he's doing a comparative study of how the different papers have handled a certain story. 

These last two characters definitely belong more to Dostoevsky than to Chekhov.  

Meanwhile, the train rumbles along.  A woman is loudly discussing on her cell phone a furniture purchase she is about to make.  Children are laughing.  There is a general buzz throughout the train.  One family is holding balloons of different colors.