WATCHING

text by dora pang // photos by dora pang and mads ernst

Watch paint dry - an idiom, typically used to describe a tedious or monotonous activity

December 15, 2022

I stood on the railroad platform outside of John F. Kennedy International Airport, watching as different train cars piled, pulled, pushed through the station, waiting until the train headed out East to Southampton arrived. I boarded, taking a single seat on an empty row in a mostly empty car. In the seat to my left sat only a medium sized, blue bag and a bundle of blue thoughts. No less than 3,000 miles away from Palo Alto, I thought for a moment that I could have been Jack Kerouac — “On The Road”, on the go, on a train feeling farther from home than ever.

The railroad took a path between the bare trees, where scrap yards turned into shipyards, with no shortage of shiplap houses. Under the overcast light, many artifacts of the Northeast sat quietly: town squares, town signs, gazebos with all-American bunting. The train trammeled, twisted, turned. I transferred lines in Babylon and noticed anchor-shaped coat hooks by each of the new train's windows. What was I anchored to? I didn’t know.

Watching the line of craftsman homes whip by as I stared through the glass, I saw that I was not even half of the vagabond Kerouac was, that being far away and on the go did not suit me, that the next few months would soon evade me. Distance would swiftly and inevitably be brought between people and memories. For the sake of even the most mundane moments, I began to wish time could be as close and lasting as watching paint dry.

January 22, 2023

Humming, whistling, skating, the train passes by the station closest to my house every hour. Although I have not been a passenger in a while, I have continued to look around to the places, doors, rooms, painted walls that fall around me. There appears to be a glimmer in it all: Sami’s adorable love for clouds; Evie’s jokes during a boring lecture; Ashley’s warmest hugs and smiles; and much, much more.

Sometimes, I think of all the homes that passed by my window on my journey out to Southampton; I know I would choose this one, with my friends (my anchors), over any other. While the future stretches branches dangling new wonders and new walls to cover, in capturing the past few months through photography, I know beauty in this placid nowness—in watching paint dry.