Transitions (Revised)

Standing across West Kalamazoo Ave. you stare down the vortex of brown-brick archways, you get the feeling that not everybody is here for the same reason as you. You see to the left, a group of young African-Americans, popping wheelies and skidding on bmx bikes in the bus station parking lot. They are here to pass the time. In the foreground is a nervous caucasion, a waist high pile of luggage to his right, and a camper’s backpack on his shoulders. With every passing minute he becomes more unsettled. He stands in front of a blue sign on a brick wall that reads: Kalamazoo Metro.
Approaching the waiting room, you notice the archways are decorated with old-time, roman-numeraled clocks that are associated with train stations. As each pair of opposing clocks passes by, time seems to slow, the clicking of bicycle wheels to the left slows and deepens, the couple playing patty-cake to your right do the same.
You pull on the door softly and its handicap assistance takes over, mechanizing your entry into the waiting room. Cackling laughter echoes from every surface, intermingling with the sounds of rolling suitcase wheels belonging to a couple of muscular travelers who are only using this room as a bridge from the train to the world outside. “This is a nice restaurant,” one muses to the other looking over the walls before exiting twenty-five paces after his entrance. The laughter echoes on, fading but not going anywhere.
Walking to the left past the ticket kiosks and rows of uncomfortably angled benches you here a young female voice whine, “Let’s go home!” She has become bored of this place. Continuing down the windowed hallway, past an overweight janitor and a skinny, young man in a track coat and a ball cap talking in friendly and familiar voices with each other. Those that don’t leave the station seem to all know each other. Curious you ask the skinny one; “Excuse me, where are you trying to get to?”
“I’m still looking for somewhere to go.” Comes the reply. Confused you approach the bathrooms.
To the left is the men’s, to the right the women’s. Turning to enter the restroom, you are greeted by a full-length mirror revealing to yourself the hardened expression and demeanor of a traveler. A complementing mirror behind you creates the illusion of yourself repeating into infinity. In the top left corner of this unsettling piece of glass is a sticker that informs you that, “For your safety, this area is monitored 24 hours a day by surveillance cameras.”
It was here on August 17, 2000, where a University of Michigan student of social work named Kevin Heisinger was found in a pool of his own blood. A scream from a 9-year-old boy who stumbled upon the scene alerted authorities of the crime committed by a schizophrenic who had forgotten his medication.
It was lack of surveillance and the unwillingness of adults within a close proximity to the incident that caused a stir in the community, and drove Amtrak and the city to begin working on the new walls and benches, archways and clocks. It was the fact that five individuals were within earshot of the murder when it was happening that pushed for this change. It was the two men who went into the bathroom, saw Heisinger, saw the blood and walked back out and across the street for coffee that put the sticker on the mirror. “For your safety.”
At the time of this murder, the train station was darker, less inviting, arch-less, with fewer busses, no electronic display of arrivals and departures, no surveillance except in the ticket kiosks. It was a relic, built in 1887, a part of the National Register for Historic Places since 1975, and the mixture of dilapidation and culture clash was a volatile one.
3.8 million federal tax dollars later the station is adorned with lights, electronics, cameras, archways, more buses, more land, more room for people to inhabit and other people to ignore. The government has polished the walls that enclose the problem.
The transitory and absent-minded culture of the train station waiting room made the station itself into a permanent resting place for this young man. Those who mistake the station for a restaurant in their mission to get back to their lives don’t have the time or patience to help somebody in need, this room is just a bridge, and its not their problem.
The people that are stuck there during the day, in between trains, or just looking for a warm, dry edifice don’t have the empathy to deal with a traveler in trouble. They too are stuck in the limbo of the transitory area. They know what happens when the destined and the lost intersect.
The only escape for the lost seems to be to challenge the train tracks by foot or bicycle as many do. As you sit with the between-train-ers and stare out the window, every few minutes the flash of a cyclist or a couple laughing carrying plastic bags, or a woman pushing a baby carriage, or even a pony-tailed man on a Vespa appear on the tracks. They have given up on being trapped; they follow the tracks in search of a destination. But will likely only find another vortex of time, another limbo.
And there too there will be people with money and bags, headphones and laptops, people that step through this place without a thought, they are more comfortable when they’re not there. Maybe they’ll stop to use some of their money to buy a sugary snack, containing just enough nutrients to get them to their next destination. If they all gave some of their snack money to a limbo dweller, they could maybe buy a ticket and go.
But the destined have no time and the others just sit and stare, playing on oversized, digital solitaire devices, avoiding the patrolling policemen, talking to their fellow limbo dwellers, passing the time. The time that means nothing to them and everything to the fleeting because they have no time to waste here. But many have too much time to leave.