In writing this blog I have had to tear myself away from a very interesting web depiction of Crossrail, London’s new 13-mile rail link. Sorry, but I do have to go on. Crossrail is 13 miles of tunnels, and that’s just the main tunnels. Actually, it’s much more. But, never mind, let’s say it’s 13 miles. And the whole thing was being planned as recently as 2008. The project got its first £1, billion influx of funds in 2009. And, if you wanted to know, and you probably didn’t, the first lines will open next year, 2022. Unless, they just happen to open around December 2021.

And why is this important to me? Why do I torture myself by reading this sort of thing? Because here in San Francisco voters authorized $66 million to build a 1.5 mile tunnel from the current Caltrain terminus to the city’s new train station in 1998. And they’re still talking about it. Not a spade of earth has been turned. The funds aren’t available to complete the thing. And here we are. I don’t understand. And in sum, it’s probably time for me to leave the Citizens Advisory Committee of San Francisco’s new four billion dollar transit center, which , of course , is designed to be the end point for Caltrain and high-speed rail from Los Angeles…and anyone who was foolish enough to wait for a train’s arrival in this place had better be a strong believer in reincarnation. I honestly don’t think I will see trains there in my lifetime, and I mean trains from San Jose or Burlingame. Never mind Los Angeles. Thus, reality.

OK, so we are a nation in decline. Things happen like this. But there’s much more at stake for me. For one, I think I have to come to grips with the fact that I am really not going to see lots of things completed. This is how it is, vis-à-vis the Grim Reaper. Also, I have to come to grips with the fact that by the time I am old, I mean older, I really won’t care about seeing lots of things completed. I already won’t. I want to complete my current book project. I wouldn’t mind going back to the UK, for at least one more visit. But actually, sometimes I think I really wouldn’t mind just going to Point Reyes, a less than 50-mile drive, for one last visit. That’s what the pandemic has taught me. And why not? It’s a very good lesson.

What my friend Bob’s Facebook site has taught me is what it says at the very top. “I have tried to live my life fully. Someday I will die.”

This is simple, isn’t it? And quite infallibly true, of course. And that’s the thing about railway stations, the future, everything. It doesn’t matter. What matters is whatever is happening now, in my foreseeable future life. Which isn’t all that forseeable.  For perspective, I look back on the life of John le Carre, a.k.a., Peter Cornwell. When I think of what I was doing five years ago, when I was still new to the Transbay Transit Center citizens’ advisory committee, well by that time, I mean that time in the future, if I was John le Carre, I would be dead at 79. And when I think of all he his written and all I haven’t…I will still be dead and it won’t matter. I’m trying to get used to this. Honestly I am. There’s not much choice.