Assignment 5
I heard the train starting to leave at the top of the steps of Union Station’s Madison entrance; people, clutching their briefcases and backpacks, pushed their way past me to fly down the stairs and shove their way onto the train. I did not change my leisurely pace down the stairs, keeping a firm hold of my own backpack as I got jostled around by commuters. With a deafening screech and puffs of exhaust that spewed a thick, sickening odor, the train rolled past me out of the station. A couple of stragglers, just jogging into the station, stagger to a stop as they forlornly watch the train retreating into the city.
With the only source of light some flickering overhead lights that coughed up a weak, sterile glow and the tiny amount of daylight that filtered in from the edges of the station, the train platform seemed gloomy and dull. Rows of train tracks cascaded from both sides of me; some tracks were occupied by a train, with people jogging to board, but most were empty. Cement pillars dotted the strip of cement that I was standing on, with a uniform distance between each of them. Some dripped with a strange liquid- too dark to be water, I thought as I squinted at the mysterious drops, but they didn’t seem to have a smell. Well, even if they did, the oppressive odor of gasoline and exhaust overpowered my senses.
The air felt more and more stuffy; I heard another shrill squeal to my right a train from an adjacent track pull in. I walk forward, past the cement pillars and the mystery liquid and the disappointed people who had resigned themselves to wait for the next inbound train, towards the sliding doors that led to the interior of Union Station. The automatic doors slid open easily as I approached them, a gust of air conditioning rushing out to meet me.
The moment I walked into the station, a warm, yellow light washed over me. The screeches and whines of the trains were instantly replaced by the normal bustle of the station; shoes tap-tapping across the tiled floors, indistinct conversation, and the constant ‘Track Nine… Track Nine…’ that constantly played near the entrance of each track for the hearing impaired. The automated voice melted into each other as if fighting for attention, creating a robotic racket of ‘Track Nine- Five – track – Eleven – Track Nine…’. The overlapping voices, for some reason, were soothing to me; it was certainly better than the noise on the train platform.
Union Station, to some, might seem ugly and outdated. But I consider Ruskin’s belief in de Botton’s The Art of Travel when he stated “Many places strike us as beautiful not on the basis of aesthetic criteria- because the colours match or symmetry and proportion are present- but on the basis of psychological criteria, inasmuch as they embody a value or mood of importance to us” (de Botton 229). The parts of Union Station by themselves- the gloomy train platform, the busy station, the outdated equipment- might not fit with an ideal aesthetic, but it’s the ‘psychological criteria’ that makes the station so appealing to me. The ebb and flow of people rushing in and out of the city, the constant chatter, and the familiar stores and restaurants make me feel comfortable; to me, it is not the aesthetic, but the atmosphere of Union Station that makes me so drawn to it.
Italy Imagined 