And then the conductor said something about one hand clapping

I will admit that I don't really understand Zen Buddhism. It seems mostly to be concerned with finding alternate ways of looking at things, pondering the kinds of questions that if you try to analyze them logically and rationally, you run the real risk of basically having your brain leak right out your ears.

This is what I was thinking about as I walked home to Ballston from the Clarendon metro station on Friday.

But wait. Ballston has a metro station, it's just two stops farther down the line from Clarendon.

This is true. It may come as no surprise, then, that the philosophical ponderings and my commute are related.

Friday afternoon, there were some issues on the Orange line which were creating delays. In fact, the Orange Line Delay was becoming an all-too-regular occurrence lately, but that's another post. Apparently, there was a disabled train somewhere around East Falls Church that was causing trains to share a track, hence the delay. Nothing new, same as it ever was. So I got on at Rosslyn, figuring that the trip would take a little longer than usual, but no big whoop. We were actually moving along better than I had expected. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, I thought. Until we got to Clarendon, where the conductor said, and I quote:

"This train will be going out of service, due to a disabled train ahead of this one."

Um, what?

Read that sentence a couple of times, and try to make any kind of sense out of it. It might help to plug your ears, just to prevent excess leakage. Don't think about it too hard, you'll just hurt yourself.

Utter ridiculousness aside, they still booted everyone off the train and onto the platform, at which point I decided that trying to figure out/understand what was going to happen next would probably take longer than the 15 minutes I would spend walking. As it was chilly but not raining outside, up the escalator and out of the absurd metro system I went.

Maybe that moment of Zen reflection is how they're justifying the latest round of rate increases. We're not going to appreciably improve service, no, but we will start contributing to your spiritual health. Think of it less as your morning commute than as one more stop on the Express Train to Enlightenment.

But grab a tissue first, because you've got a little something coming out of your ears.