Life Lessons on the Train

7 March '75
Taking the train to Boston. I haven't taken a train for 9 years and the station seems as other-worldly as a movie. This is no modern transportation terminal, but an old fashioned, cliched place of high vaults, cavernous marble men's room, and long corridor, stairs and platforms poorly lit by old-fashioned incandescent fixtures which seem to create (rather than just leave) pools of palpable shadow between.
The predominant color is institutional light green (dirty) and one is reminded of a NY subway station.
I wonder if train stations in Europe are like this one - I am enjoying myself very much, and wonder if I would [blank] many nights in the stations of Europe. Probably I would, since I have the happy faculty of being able to enjoy, or at least find interesting situations which most people would find objectionable. Novelty, irony, and downright triumph over (or quiet acquiescence in) apparently appeal to me.
I am sitting in the smoking car although I could find no cigar (union station closes up rather earlier than Port Authority but terminal), because the adjacent non-smoking cars were older and not so nice as this one. It is almost full.
This being one of those great waste spaces of life to which I have earlier alluded, I shall use some time before trying to sleep in setting down more of the Stauffer Philosophy, both part I (life) and part II (art).
Getting angry or upset never helps. It merely destroys one's capability to reason and deal with a situation without altering the physical situation by one atom. Calmness, even in the face of outrage, preserves one's own peace of mind, which as far as I know, is the ideal state of life. Certainly, in a fight to argument between friends or lovers, the ore sensible (or loving, or reasonable) person will capitulate as soon as possible. Since all friends or lovers expect (except in the last, bitter stages of waning care for the other) to make up again, it is obvious good sense for one party either to refuse to dispute altogether or to make up immediately, even in mid-sentence or at risk of losing face. I once annoyed Sharon immediately after an argument (and probably more than she had been annoyed during the argument) by asking her how long it would be until she wished to make up. I explained that since surely she would eventually no longer by angry with me, whether 2 hours or 24 from then, it would be more sensible for her to stop being angry with me at that moment, and so avoid wasting time. I do not remember that she agreed with me.
Anger and upset waste time, both your time and the time of all those who are forced to listen to you, whether they be the focus of the upset, sympathetic listeners, or unwilling witnesses.