14 - Tracks
My shoulder leans against the wall of the commuter car, my head rests on the window; below my seat as we pass I see the brown rushes of the salt marsh blur by, and lazy fingers of the coastal rivers reaching inland and taking what they find seaward. A hawk on a pin-oak branch, both bird and bough wearing winter dress, and equally impassive and we clatter past. Salt marsh, wood lot, salt marsh, wood lot. These are my favorite scenes.
Everything is my favorite everything these days. It’s two weeks from departure, and while this travel is far from “final” – unless that was an ironic premonition, I’ll be back mid-April for a couple more months stateside – farewell adds value to the people and places that made this region home for so many years. Hello wakes you up, and goodbye wakes you up. There is nostalgia in the evaporating moment, there’s a fragrance you can’t forget…
Here I am on a train, the same train I rode alone in ‘68, crossing the Minnesota plains and under the widest sky you can imagine. I leaned against the railcar, my head resting against the glass, while the northern lights blazed off to the north over Canada, and lit my way away from home.
Here I am on a train, the same train I rode in ‘85, through what was then Yugoslavia, with a silent night-owl rider by my side. I stood leaning against the wall of the railcar, rested my head against the glass, and watched the infrequent lights of farmhouses wash by. The man beside man beside me nudged my arm and, when I looked, he smiled and pointed up: “Aygles!” He was gesturing at the stars. “Angles!”
“Eagles?” I asked in English, then “Oder Engeln?” On those trains, you never knew which might be a common language, if any, if all. He nodded vigorously, then was silent. Then he pointed at me: “Deutsch?” I shook my head no, American.
“Ahhh,” he nodded knowingly. “Kapitalist!”
“No nein non… je suis poète… ich bin ein Dichter!”
He waved off my objection. “Ein kleiner Kapitalist…” Just a little capitalist. He rests his case.
Here I am on a train, the same train that disgorged friend Manny and me on an unlit platform on a side road in Goa, India, somewhere between before and after.
The same train that puffed me away from my home in Indonesia, dazed and heartbroken, leaving new friends and a woman who (the Javanese Seer told us) would never be my wife.
The train filled with drunken sports fans, urbanely shuttling Catalina and me to and from ancient Bruges-as-tourist-attraction. The train that flew at nearly 200 kph away from my future home toward Girona, a university in a castle in northern Catalonia…
“Train in Sri Lanka 3” by Arnaud Legrand @ DeviantArt.com
Here I am on a train. Here I am on a train. Here I am on a train.