The Goodbye Girl

Another city, another coulda-woulda-shoulda, another farewell (or should that be ciao, adieu, take care or even a simple bye?). It’s odd how easy it can be to let someone into your life when you know it will be for such a brief, fleeting moment. You know you shouldn’t and that you won’t see them again and yet you have seen Before Sunrise and Before Sunset and have faith in the philosophy behind these movies. It bothers you, somehow, that your cynicism can be worn away so abruptly in the right circumstances and yet it probably shouldn’t. It is a good sign, you are sure.

After immense bullying from every American I have spoken to, I decided against catching the overnight bus from Montréal to New York last night and instead caught the train from the gare centrale this morning. It’s a long journey – ten hours – but very scenic. In fact, it feels as though I have teleported into the middle of The Last of the Mohicans (another favourite movie of mine) or Sleepy Hollow. The train travels around the Adirondack Mountains and hugs the base of Lake Champlain and then descends through the Hudson Valley at a somewhat leisurely pace.

However, my seat is comfortable, I have plenty of leg room and those thoughtful folks at Amtrak have even provided a power source for my laptop so I can write to my heart’s content and even watch a movie (Twelve Monkeys) now that I have finished the sequel to Brightness Falls, entitled The Good Life, which I enjoyed even more than its predecessor. Jay McInerney has a talent for evoking our sympathy towards the four central characters, none of whom are particularly moral.

ETA: Not so impressed with Amtrak now that I arrived in NYC at 11pm instead of 8pm. No dinner and no night-time activities for moi. Error.