Morning (and evening) train(s)
It's my fourth day of work and I still don't know the train timetable, and so often find myself sitting on a bench in the station, scribbling.
[Side note: I love saying I ‘commute’ to work. The word somehow imbues me with a sense of all-purposefulness and dedication to my career (car-less and broke); casts the image of a busy young professional, briefcase-laden (large handbag), coffee (tea) in one hand and a rolled-up paper (Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent) in another.]
I am unimaginative and easily inspired, and therefore most of what I write about is trains. (Bet you didn't see that one coming.)
Like how heady it is in the morning, surrounded by and invisible to school-age children. The air is thick with unconscious potential, like swirly, oozy soup from which anything may spring.
Like how I want to follow every single person on board, as he or she is swallowed and then regurgitated. I want to walk their roads, live their lives, think their thoughts. It will, I am sure, be like watching a slowly spilling splash of liquid gems.
Like how sometimes, I feel like gently stepping off the platform as a train hurtles by, out of plain and simple curiosity – I wonder how it feels like to be a splat.
Like how once, while waiting, I saw a crescent moon, beaming, with a smallish star just above one horn; a tiny wink from one working traveler to another.
But most of all, like how the anti-social in me, brought out by the incessant human contact in an office, where work is a never-ending tepid pool, finds comfort in the alone-ness of it all. I crave the emptiness of the carriages, the comfortingly solid cranks and clanks, the slight yet soothing sways and jolts, the sight of the city’s many-windowed fingers reaching towards a sunset sky.
All this is all mine, mine, mine, with no one to spoil the wondrousness of solitude.
This is an under-appreciated Heaven.
[Side note: I love saying I ‘commute’ to work. The word somehow imbues me with a sense of all-purposefulness and dedication to my career (car-less and broke); casts the image of a busy young professional, briefcase-laden (large handbag), coffee (tea) in one hand and a rolled-up paper (Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent) in another.]
I am unimaginative and easily inspired, and therefore most of what I write about is trains. (Bet you didn't see that one coming.)
Like how heady it is in the morning, surrounded by and invisible to school-age children. The air is thick with unconscious potential, like swirly, oozy soup from which anything may spring.
Like how I want to follow every single person on board, as he or she is swallowed and then regurgitated. I want to walk their roads, live their lives, think their thoughts. It will, I am sure, be like watching a slowly spilling splash of liquid gems.
Like how sometimes, I feel like gently stepping off the platform as a train hurtles by, out of plain and simple curiosity – I wonder how it feels like to be a splat.
Like how once, while waiting, I saw a crescent moon, beaming, with a smallish star just above one horn; a tiny wink from one working traveler to another.
But most of all, like how the anti-social in me, brought out by the incessant human contact in an office, where work is a never-ending tepid pool, finds comfort in the alone-ness of it all. I crave the emptiness of the carriages, the comfortingly solid cranks and clanks, the slight yet soothing sways and jolts, the sight of the city’s many-windowed fingers reaching towards a sunset sky.
All this is all mine, mine, mine, with no one to spoil the wondrousness of solitude.
This is an under-appreciated Heaven.
posted by me me me at
11:05 PM
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