X

He sat there. She sat there. They sat there. Some alone. Some not. Consumed by sorrow or overwhelmed with joy or suffering the drain of apathy, they waited. The soldier there passed the time. The mother there waited for the whistle of the train. The vagabond there dozed the minutes past. Its seat is marked by tears. The wood still resonates with laughter. The humble throne has carried the large and the small, the rich and the poor, the selfish and selfless. It is the last stop to success. It is the first stop to failure. It is insignificant.

It is thrashed, abused, forgotten, stained, and used un-thanked. It is the point between A and B. It is no one's destination. Its mark is on no map. It is invisible.

I angrily sat down in the chair and slung my backpack over its scarred arm. Two hours I would have to wait. Two hours. I hunched over my book and attempted to pass the time quickly, but I soon became stiff. I straightened up and rolled my shoulders. I let the book fall to the floor. It wasn't very good anyway. My eyes scanned the room. Countless people filed in and out of the terminal. Though a few remained, like myself, stuck for further waiting. One was a soldier. Another was a mother. The last was a younger homeless-looking man with his life, it seemed, on his back. I couldn't imagine where they had all come from. And I could not guess where their travels would take them. Each had a different destination and each were coming from a different place. But each, myself included, were there, at that moment, together, waiting to continue on. This was point X. The point between A and B. AXB I call it. We were all at X. Waiting. If lives were single strands of yarn, each soul a keeper of a single length, point X would be the most infuriating knot any man would ever encounter. It is at X where so many people come into contact with so many people and are, in many cases, left changed by the event. Even if the change is slight, such exposure to such a knot of traveling souls renders even the most calloused traveler softer or harder than he had been hours before.

The soldier stood and left his seat; he walked briskly to a certain gate and disappeared from me. The mother also, after countless glances at her watch, gathered her brood and left. The vagabond and I had then reached our time to leave and we stood to board the Amtrak to San Diego. I picked up my backpack but it felt light. Too light. I looked back to the seat and upon its soft cushion rested my heavy, film, Nikon FA. I picked it up, cranked a square of untouched 35mm film into place, looked through the viewfinder, and saw nothing. Black. Lens cap. I took off the lens cap, peered through the viewfinder, focused, and pressed decisively on that little silver button. And on that square of film I later found my chair. And if one looks carefully enough they can see a chaotic mass of yarn resting peacefully upon the tear-stained cushion of point X.