Jotipalo’s friend John was kind enough drive us from Lafayette through the northern plains of Indiana up into the south suburbs of Chicago and finally to Chicago itself. We snaked up Lake Shore Drive, only one of thousands of cars flowing north into the city glittering in the bright sun and heavy heat of June in the Midwest. John kept a watchful eye on the engine heat as the air conditioning was blasting and barely keeping the interior of the car cool.

The south side of Chicago looks battered. I can see the stress of poverty expressed in the forlorn glances of liquor stores, abandoned buildings, and run-down apartments. The buildings look disheveled and forgotten. Slowly as we head north, the cityscape begins to change and a dash of new housing is cast into century-old parts of the city. As the commercial towers of downtown Chicago grow near, we find ourselves humming past clean glass and brazen brick leaving behind the servers and merging with the served.

We pull up alongside Union Station and give John our thanks and farewell wishes. Leaving the relative calm of John’s car, we climb a few stairs to the door of the station and then begin our descent into the throng of summertime tourism. This weekend boasts baseball games, the Taste of Chicago and the Gay Pride parade. Union Station hosts the intersection of divergent desires. One by one we become a crowd, one by one we go our separate ways.

Jotipalo and I find seclusion in the closed section of a bar in the train station. We pull the chairs off a table and sit away from the busyness of the crowd. All of the individual attachments and aversions in a crowd feed each other. It is as though anxiety is attractive. Everyone rushes ahead and looks over his or her shoulder at the same time. There is a sense that if the right signal is given order will cease and chaos will erupt.

Our seclusion gives us breathing room, but it is not perfect. Heavy metal sears the air from an overhead speaker. I know one or two songs that in my early adolescence I would have been excited to hear; the rest all blend into a background of angst that no longer fits me. Angst is so common in suburban America. It is a thread in the garment of national identity. Angst is the product of realizing that the values we are taught are terribly misplaced. Most rebel and stop there with anger and an inner anarchy. Eventually the anger burns out and without the heat of its flame the rebels fall back on the same values that they once had opposed so thoroughly. Few understand that the culture and the counterculture are only different expressions of the same source. One becomes the other ad infinitum.

As the present moment crept closer to our departure time we found our way to the gate we would be leaving from. The room was an incarnation of purgatory. The air was flavored with human odors; the light florescent and the color scheme the unassuming tans of suburbia. A frantic woman was visibly shaking as she wove her way to the front of the room. I could clearly see that she was suffering and that it wasn’t helping her any. How much better would her day be if she could let go of whatever had put her in that state? The rest of us waited. During the whole of the pilgrimage this afternoon in purgatory was the best cross-section of America I had seen yet. It felt like everybody was there. I caught several wide eyes and “nonchalant” nods in our direction. Yes, yet again we were objects of great interest. The Amish don’t even get as much attention as we do. I hope that doesn’t give them a bone to pick with us.

Eventually we were allowed to proceed to the train and begin boarding. It was a frantic slow march of people burdened with luggage. The anxiety of the crowd was present again. Anxiety arises from thinking of the self and I knew what everyone else was thinking because it entered my mind as well. “I want to get a good seat before they are all gone!” So under the awkward weight of their luggage, people struggle to get ahead of others. On the train every car looks identical. The seats are all the same size. There are two options, window or aisle. Yet, every time I board a train I experience the same urge to get the “best” seat.

Once on the train we found that every seat on the train had been sold. We had to work our way through two train cars before we found empty seats. A Presbyterian youth group had the majority rule in our car. They wore sky-blue t-shirts with pictures of Jesus on the front and the text, “The Mob Squad.” The connection between the image and the text has eluded me. I have contemplated it off and on since seeing it and I am baffled. It could simply be that they call their group the Mob Squad and they pasted Jesus on to insure that others knew this was no secular group, but my mind wants to believe that there is a more cryptic message that I am missing.

I publicly make the prayer, may I never be put in charge of more than twenty teenage boys and girls for the rest of my life. Please. Looking at the chaperones for the group I saw that the end of the rope was close at hand. They only relief for them was that they had made it onto the train with all the kids and were on their way home.

I ventured out to the lounge car to procure some beverages and met a man originally from Monserrat, a small island in the Caribbean. He asked me to sit with him and we spent several hours deep in conversation. His name was Ijah and he was the first Rastafarian I had the opportunity to speak with in a profound way. I do not believe in coincidence. We meet people when we need to meet them. I have gotten stuck here unable to express what happened between us. All I can say is that it felt as though we were supposed to meet.

Ijah is a recording artist and is spreading the ideas of peace and love through his music. He said that he used to write more secular lyrics, but has transformed his lyrical body into a mouthpiece for something that goes deeper than the ego. The train was propelling him westward to San Francisco where he was to join a band called Bamboo Station for a few shows.

The train stopped one town from our destination for a smoke break. Only a few years ago there was a smoking room on every train. Now they are smoke free. We got off to stretch and mill about Ottumwa for a few minutes. Sunset was approaching and the air was still thick and hot. A man with a ponytail was swaying toward us, hiccupping and barely keeping his balance. He came up and spoke to us. His speech was a deep slur enunciated by hiccups that threatened vomit in the same way that thunder threatens a storm. He confessed his drunkenness. He spoke about pillars of conduct. He said there were eight, but he only ever got to the second. He made it there several times, but could not find his way past it. He burned with suffering. We spoke with him smiling and generating peace. Everyone else on the train gave him a wide berth and had condescending eyes. Having experience with alcoholics I knew that our words with him would bear no fruit, but what about trying to just be there with him?

Honestly, I do not know the outcome of our conversation. Most likely I will never see him again. He told us that he had just gotten out of rehab after shooting dope for twelve years. Clearly he was not ready to be out on his own without any support. Compassion moved me to want to act. He words related not only the blindness of having lost all hope, but also the understanding that his actions were not wholesome. We could have flooded him with Buddhist rhetoric, but then we would have been the Southern Baptist planting seeds by telling us we were hell-bound. What despair would have greeted him if we explained the concept of not self to him? We could not answer the questions that he didn’t ask.

So this was the moment. In past journal entries I have written about being generous in every aspect of the day. What could I give this man and what could he accept? Upon contemplation one thing arose in the mind, “I don’t know.” I don’t think that there was anything to be done other than to shower him with love and look at him as an equal. He was desperately alone and what I could do was reach across the void and be with him right now.

What does it take to do that? It takes letting go of the fear that at any moment he was going to puke on my sandaled feet; it takes letting go of the aversion I feel towards someone who cannot control himself and it takes letting go of the barriers that I construct against the world. What good is all the yoga and meditation in the world if I leave it on the mat or cushion?

I do not know where he was headed or what old friends and old habits awaited him there, but may those who read this send goodwill and love in his direction. He is going to need all that he can get to overcome his addictions.

My father was waiting to pick us up at the station and a new chapter began, where Jotipalo gets to meet my family and see the role that I play with those with who I am closest. We waited as the train slid past out of the station carrying those we had shared a few hours with on to their futures.