Ah, there is nothing like the view when leaving Newark Airport to bring home to one - whether resident or visitor - the least garden like aspects of the Garden State. And to think that someone brought up on American music in Britain thought - courtesy of Simon and Garfunkel - that there was something rather exotic-sounding about the New Jersey Turnpike - one was striking out, evidently, for the whole territory if one took it. I think that it was the word "turnpike" that sounded rather romantic and archaic, rather than "New Jersey," mind you.
Landing around 6 a.m. this morning, NJ was grey and wet and not looking at its best. So the challenge - not a tough one - was how to turn a fairly dismal image, taken from the light rail to EWR station (and whilst talking to a woman who realized that she was going in the wrong direction, and every inch was taking her further away from Terminal A and, presumably, her escape from NJ) - into an even more gloomy scene. This was very much a point-and-shoot affair - and it's left me wondering whether the car chopped in half by the rail, and the truck just emerging from the bridge, would have made for a much better and More Composed image if I'd waited just a second or so longer - or whether their sliced imperfection and not-quite-effected emergence are, indeed, part of the symbolic repertoire that go along with signifying that one's back in New Jersey. There's quite definitely nothing of the up-beat quality to the seediness that goes along with the best ever NJT'pike sequence that introduces The Sopranos, but the belching steam of the Budweiser plant is doing its smelly best in the background to remind one of the olfactory accompaniment to the general murk.
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