At Least the Trains Still Run on Time

It's all crumbling, folks.

Author

Hayley Veilleux
February 20, 2025

Hiya!

I know it’s been years since my last email and you might be thinking, Hayley, I thought this was supposed to be a bi-weekly newsletter, and it’s been SIX weeks. 

I can explain.

The newsletter is late because I am scum who chronically operates on INFP time. I also started a full-time job last month (which is a whole other thing), and honestly I’ve just been more scummy than usual. I suspect this will be my Hermit Year. 

So if I haven’t responded to your texts, I really am sorry. But please know that I’ve hardly responded to anyone’s texts. I get distracted. I’m tired. And I keep seeing myself propped before a digital screen from a third-person POV, only for this image to suddenly reveal itself as a metaphor for my life if I don’t change course soon.

Anyway, I’ll get on with it.

Flugelhorns and Euphoniums

I’ve been repeat-listening to the newest Bright Eyes album, Five Dice, All Threes, and damn, they released that baby just on time. The album dropped last September, four months before L.A. went ablaze in all directions, and yet the third track boasts the lines: 

❝

The world is on fire, California is a crucible

We're running out of water, they already stole all the gold.

After approximately two (2) friends texted me on the evening of the inauguration I decided that I, too, would watch some of the ordeal as I folded five mountains of laundry. Within seconds of turning on the televised celebration I witnessed billionaires, tech CEOs, and other oligarchs huddle en masse as tinny flugelhorns and euphoniums began to clash in unison. It was like the accompanying soundtrack to one of Magic Kingdom’s 1950s-era-inspired parades with their endless train of patriotic red-white-and-blue and cast of Disney characters from Mickey Mouse to Cinderella; and amidst this bizarre backdrop of music calling forth what is to many nostalgia for a better time, I knew that Donald Trump and his bleached orange hair would soon step before the podium, symbolizing the rapid acceleration of an empire in decline.

I stumbled upon this beauty while looking at rentals on Facebook Marketplace.

What a fun time in history to be alive.

I stopped watching the inauguration after Donny signed his 20th executive order in a surprisingly small gymnasium for a presidential inauguration. I’d yet to finish folding my laundry but I couldn’t bear another minute. I then turned on the 11th track of Connor Oberst’s 11th studio album and danced very badly to Trains Still Run on Time.

❝

Made in America on a factory floor

There’s a Disney character breaking down the door

And the orchestra plays

A cartoon score for war.

…

Made in America

On an assembly line

Where they make mass hysteria

Yeah, it's all streamlined

Nobody bats an eye

'Cause the trains still run on time.

I don’t know, folks. This newsletter might be a bummer. A buzz-kill. A tiny suicide.

My Evolution from Rat Person to Member of the 9-5 Rat Race

Me wearing TWO sweaters because it’s freezing in my office.

I got a new job. A 9-to-5-with-a-salary-job, which just saying aloud or writing this fact seems to bang the panic gong in my head. Freedom is a luxury in this world.

But my boss is nice and cool, and the job is remote, which is great because it’s largely been sub-freezing outside, which I’m beginning to enjoy a lot less than I did in January. It’s currently the coldest it’s been all winter and my property company decided to make my building’s WONDERFULLY efficient boiler(?) heating system obsolete. So it’s freezing in my apartment and my tiny space heater only manages to warm air within a three-foot radius of the northeast corner of my living room—which isn’t enough to counter the one-degree air drafting from each of the four neighboring windows. I can barely feel my hands as I’m writing this.

The intense cold, the job, and the insanity of the world—coupled with my desire to experience tranquility just once in my life—have all contributed to my Hermit Year, in which I’ve so far done a whole lot of Marketing And Communications Stuff, and where, in a truly negligible way, I’ve been contributing to land remediation for tribal communities living on or near polluted land. Considering the current state of the Land Of The Free/Best/Most Affordable Country In The World and my personal life, which is painted with chronic pain and rapid fluctuations in both mood and energy, I admit I’m quite grateful for my full-time, 9-5, non-commuting job.

Bad Dreams

Instagram showed me a horrific video a couple of weeks ago—though it wasn’t the usual kind of barbarity we’ve seen on social media from late 2023 to the present day—and strangely, this out-of-the-blue video appeared when I clicked on the “search” page while trying to look for an account. I will not share all the details, but I will say the video involved a very large toad (or frog, I’m not sure) experiencing a very awful end to its life. It was not only bizarre and reminiscent of the 2005 film, Hostel, but it was the kind of Ending that could only be possible in a world like ours. Naturally, my dreams manufactured a collage of simulacrums, together conjuring up segments of “normal” waking life with the addition of a segment I’ll call Dream Hayley vs. Turtle in Very Bad Shape. 

In my dream I stumbled upon a tiny turtle (let’s call him Pete) on the porch of a crumbling home—in a dilapidated part of town not too far from an affluent suburban neighborhood (both neighborhoods: inventions of my brain)—and the turtle was Not Thriving. Pete looked so physically bad that I felt incredibly distressed about his situation and did my best to assess how I could ease his suffering, yet all my attempts only made things worse. A metaphor, I presume.

So I was standing on this dilapidated porch with its cascade of white chipped paint and holding Pete when I accidentally fumbled the little guy in my hands, causing him to fall from the porch. But when he fell off the porch it suddenly reconfigured itself as a second-story balcony, so the fall was much greater than I’d anticipated. When I leaped down the decrepit staircase toward the front yard I found Pete face down near a bush, his little tongue sticking out of his mouth, long and limp like we were living in a fucking cartoon.

It gets worse, though, because Pete still had some life left in him—clearly, he was a fighter. The sun was blistering hot, and even though his body was displaying all the recognizable signs of a dead body, I noticed little beads of sweat accumulate on his forehead, followed by a disconcerting noise resembling both a wheeze and strained gasp.

This sign of life in Pete made me want to die.

I don’t remember much of what happened after the gasp, but it took an entire week to extricate the image of Pete’s face and floppy tongue from my brain.

Content!

(Why so many YouTube links? Great question! Not everyone has Spotify and I’m thinking of all you non-Spotify-havin’ folk. You’re welcome.)

Au Revoir

I think I’m supposed to feel bad about being a recluse. That’s the sense I’ve gotten for as long as I’ve been able to think. But I don’t feel bad about it because I’ve still seen members of my species, I’ve watched a few good movies (a lot of mid ones also), I’ve cultivated two (2) good habits, I’ve been going to sleep at a relatively consistent hour for the first time in over a decade (a doctor recently shared that I likely have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which IMO sounds more like a society problem than a Me problem, but we know who calls the shots in this regard), and I now have a coffee pot that automatically brews my favorite drug every morning at 8:00 AM—whether or not I’ve snoozed my alarm—and that, dear reader, is Joy.

I will not do a final proofread because I don’t have time. Instead I will sign off with the following category:

My Psychic Mother’s Predictions for February 2025:

(made in November 24’ and January 25’)

  • Large sinkhole opens up in a U.S. desert

  • Large building falls (location unknown)

Be well.
-HV

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