From the tracks on Marmion Way and Avenue Fifty-Nine, families have gathered together behind the gates of their houses at the end of a stifl ing Friday afternoon, ignoring the splintering advance of the Gold Line train; the drone, the dust, the fistfuls of light and heat that rain down on their street for ten seconds. The train itself is practically empty now, luxuriating in the last breath before the early evening crush of dallying students and spent office workers. From where I sit in the middle car, the play of ordinary streets outside the window unfolds in triptych; the abandoned toys on the curb that creak to life with the train’s approach, the cryptic darkness of cracked backdoors, the half-rabid dogs humping up against fences, the lazy banal splendor of Los Angeles. Domesticity uncorking like the intro of a Twilight Zone episode.
