Free The Railroad by Neil Douglas Newton Page A

various things, like a drowning man reaching for a piece of wood. I watched the news earnestly. Then I watched the history channel earnestly. Then I watched the Congressional Channel earnestly. Then I took a nap.
    The second day I attacked my bookshelf. Unlike my city apartment, where all the books were technical in nature, I had stocked my Bardstown bookshelf with things that I could buy at upstate bookstores, flea markets and regional fairs. Most of it was stuff I never would have considered reading in the City: philosophy, Eastern religion, self-help books, books on light science, the odd existentialist novel and even such rebellious staples as The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test .
    By day three I started trying to meditate. I emphasized the word “try” because, in the rite by fire of Dain and Crabtree, I had never had to spend time with myself for more than two seconds. Being a mover and a shaker, I had never thought that doing something as seemingly simple as meditation would be difficult. I was wrong.
    Meditation didn’t seem to be doing the trick. So I turned to exercise. How many years had it been since I’d done pushups or jumping jacks? The floor creaked below me, alarmingly. I managed about 25 pushups through sheer force of will. Then I collapsed back onto the couch, feeling slightly better thanks to endorphins. I considered a nap. That was unhealthy, I realized, so I went into the back yard to commune with nature. As I passed my cheap stereo, a thought occurred to me. Rummaging in the spare room, I found an old boom-box I had bought on a whim years ago. Sitting on an old dresser was a box of tapes and CDs that held the sum total of my occasional jaunts to Record Haven in the nearby town of Randolph. I settled on “The best of Mozart”, something that seemed appropriate at the time; I loved driving around when I came up to Bardstown and Mozart was the best driving music I’d ever found.
    I walked on to the very ugly back deck and managed to plug the boom-box into an outlet just to the left of the sliding doors. I could see the backs of three other houses and I wondered what the stay-at-home wives would think of the sudden infusion of Mozart into their backyards. Would they call the cops? Would they hear anything at all over their televisions and their children’s screams?
    I hit the button and did my best to ignore the houses around me and focus on the green hills to my left. There was a state park nearby that I’d gone to a few times with Barbara; it was the best thing to look at in what was a seriously dingy neighborhood. A dog barked, probably in response to my music, ruining what little good mood I could muster.
    I tried for ten minutes to feel the quiet of my new life, letting the strains of Mozart work into my bones. This is exactly what I need , I told myself. I tried to imagine what was happening at Crabtree and Dain, willing myself to see Todd and Emma arguing over some petty detail of a system. Users would come by and make their lives miserable, demanding everything and offering nothing. They would steal an hour at the Szechuan Palace and bitch about everything and everyone they’d come into contact with in the previous three hours at work. They’d wolf down some chow fun and walk back to work with their stomachs in a knot.
    It was exactly what I knew was happening to them. It sounded cruel and mind-numbing. And I envied them every bit of pain and frustration.
    How could things have gotten so bad for me , I asked myself. Was I so helpless that I couldn’t spend three days alone without crumbling? I stared bleakly at the other houses around me. I watched a weathervane spin weakly in the sparse winter light. There were lives in those houses, probably a bit healthier than mine.
    Had I made a mistake? Should I have stuck it out in the City and made it work?  How could a Wall Street raider live in a place with no challenges, no stress, no sushi?
    I walked back into my ugly living room and turned on a