I looked out the front of the commuter train from S's this morning, the length of a car away. The opening at the front seemed so promising: unexpected light, a window onto something rare and precious. I wondered how the backward-facing commuters could be so oblivious, with their New York Times folded into halves and quarters, the sports section and the crossword puzzle. But the truth is there wasn't much to see out front. Signals and trees and vague debris. Tunnels and walls and every surface painted in graffiti. Weeds grew in between the tracks. A uniformed figure waving from the platform of a bypassed station. I was so glad to see it.