Got a blue moon in my eye...

I've been absent for some time. The Matt-Cave has been very cold and lonely, I know. Things have kept me away for a bit. The sort of things where you break up with your boyfriend of 3 years and have to go home to live with your parents and try to figure out how to reconstruct your life from the wreckage. So.. you know... stuff.

But I'm moving on. And I made Stephen promise to stop by The Matt-Cave from time to time and add his opinion. So now I'm taking a short break from paying rent while I get things back on track. To that end, I'm in good ol' Kearny, New Jersey regaining my sanity and commuting to the city every morning. I feel so suburban.

My morning commute has become the opening montage to The Sopranos. I speed through Northern New Jersey and gaze out across highways, landfills, rail yards, truck depots, the Pulaski Skyway - everything minus the destination of a comfortable estate paid for with mafia blood. Actually I think everything in Jersey has been paid for with mafia blood at some point. But rather than cruising through Jersey in a tacky SUV, I watch the sights from the even tackier PATH train.

I know how people around here feel about the PATH train, their unyielding loyalty to this very small transit system that becomes a complete burden after 11PM and smells like rancid deli meat the rest of the time. I have a soft spot in my heart for the PATH too. In high school, it used to get me into and out of NYC for Broadway shows and gay-themed movies all the time. But the people! Not a day passes when I don't see at least 2 copies of The Da Vinci Code and a Readers' Digest being read as if it were The New Yorker. I've seen and, worse yet, smelled enough breakfast burritos and McEgg-ey Meatwhiches (or whatever they call them) to last me a lifetime. And I don't know exactly what sort of work the woman from the Newark stop does everyday, but she seems to show up each morning in over-sized t-shirts, under-sized stretch pants, and just the right amount of rouge... for a whore.

It's an interesting assortment of sights and sounds and smells each morning. I do my best to lose myself in my Dunkin' Donuts coffee and my Star magazine. Because there is more than a little Jersey trash still in me too.