MARTA & A Thousand Rose Petals

Earlier this week, when I got to my MARTA station to make my way to school, I noticed that someone – a MARTA attendant? a helpful blog reader with a cleaning obsession? – removed the broken cookies from the MARTA platform. Hurray for progress and cleanliness!

It’s kind of comforting, in a dull, yawny way, when my MARTA station returns to its typical state of boring boringness. Therefore, imagine my shock and… and… dismay? rapture? shock again?... when Thursday brought a new surprise at my MARTAstation! There I was, trudging down the stairs from the parking deck toward the entry platform, when I saw this:

What is that, you may ask? Snow in Atlanta in Springtime? No! In fact, this photo shows a pile of white rose petals. The photo does not do justice the rosey petaly vision that was the MARTA station. There were thousands – literally thousands! – of white rose petals strewn about the floor. Petals in singles and pairs around the main area. Petals in tiny piles around the MARTA pass machines and in larger piles (like the one in the photo) around the various stairwells and columns. White rose petals swirling around commuting feet and skittering across the pavement on small puffs of breeze.

What happened to create such a scene? Well, I have a few ideas:

• Some lovely young man, holding tight to a large bouquet of white roses, proposed to his beloved as she disembarked from her MARTA train. In a fit of rapturous joy upon her acceptance of his proposal, this young man threw the roses down on the paved MARTA floor and carried his intended off to his only slightly rusted, off-tan, 1994 Mazda 626, awaiting him on floor 4 of the parking deck.

• The night before my arrival at the MARTA station was the first, and ultimately the last, night of a new business idea.  You know how you can be at a restaurant or a romantic locale and there are nice men and women wandering around selling roses to add to the ambience (and profit) of the place? Well, perhaps someone got the idea that this would succeed during evening rush hour and would bring joy to the masses heading home from a long day at work.  And perhaps one of the rush hour commuters, after a particularly bad day, disagreed… hence, white rose petals scattered everywhere and a new business idea ended in its infancy.

• A traveling magician arrived at the MARTA station after a long flight and a seemingly equally long ride up the north-south line. As he exited through the turnstiles, he noticed an odd agitation coming from the covered birdcage he held. Whipping off the blanket covering the cage, he realized that he’d accidentally fed his magic doves a volatile concoction of beans, hot sauce and strong coffee (an easy error to make, of course). Realizing what was about to happen, this magic man grabbed his wand and yelled, “Abracadabra!” at the exact moment that the edible explosives took their deadly toll. Fortunately for all around – except the doves, of course – the magic trick worked, and rather than the mess that could have ensued, the MARTA station denizens found themselves in the midst of an explosion of thousands of white rose petals.

Those are my ideas. What do you think happened? Please share!

Thank You, MARTA!

I’ve been at a bit of a loss the last few days for blog material, between abject exhaustion and relatively continuous immersion in schoolwork. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an overabundance of horrible, tragic, overwhelming, devastating [insert other expressions of distress here] news coming in from around the world, and I just don’t feel like commenting about that here. Here is for fun (generally).

So there I was this morning, beginning my long slog to school and feeling glum about having nothing to ramble about to ya’ll, when MARTA came through for me. Twice, even!

After shuffling along the platform, I chose a sparsely populated MARTA car and sat down. After getting settled, I looked up and saw this:

MARTA passenger.

In my exhausted state, it took me a few minutes to realize that this MARTA denizen was no longer - shall we say - animated. Somehow, this lovely specimen had gotten its little footsie (scientific term) stuck, so there it remained even after its untimely demise, adding ornamental flair to the otherwise bland décor. Not only had no one knocked this thing off the wall between when it initially became entrapped and when I sat down, but no one removed it or even paid it much mind during the entire half hour I was on the train… AND no one seemed to bat an eye that I was taking its close-up.

After my class, I took the train home and started up the parking garage stairs. When I hit the third landing, I encountered this (minus the key chain):

Frankencookies, with keychain next to them for perspective.

Megan, you may say, what is so profound and fascinating about a few broken cookies?  Try this on for size: That broken cookie has been on this landing in this stairwell at least since I started school. At the beginning of January. Today is April 7. If you’re math-challenged, that’s three months (and counting). And I don’t think the pieces have budged from their original resting places. Even better, I’m not sure if you can tell from the picture – I have an old-school phone, not a fancy new smartphone that takes National Geographic quality photos – but the cookies are not noticeably decomposing. At. All. Is there such a thing as a Twinkie cookie?

Anyone want to come with me to the MARTA station to try a nibble of those cookie pieces to see if they’re truly in edible condition?  I’ll bring my good camera for that.