I Knew Him, Horatio - To Ride a Train

To Ride a Train

Apr. 5th, 2005 | 05:54 pm

meta-creation_date: 4/5/2005 17:54:40

Someday I’d like to ride a train. The long, long train vanishing into the distance calls to me; the sound of its mournful whistle cuts to the very core of my being. A train is going away from; it is not going to. You leave things behind a train, and you may never see their like again.

In a train, there is much sorrow; and in that sorrow is joy. But the joy is not in the train: the joy is in the euphony of sorrow. A true sombre melancholy which pervades a train is the heart of all its joy. When those in a train are happy, it is because of the pure and silent peace true sorrow and berevement of all brings.

When one boards a train, it is a step longer than any taken anywhere else: the last step of “here” and the first step of the unknown. Every step taken in that train is a step within a netherworld, and a step which does not exist.

A train is curious. It merely goes from “here” to “there” and back again, but while you are aboard a train, “there” comes “here” and “here” hastens elsewhere. The nature of “here” and “there” is as surreal as that of joy and sorrow, aboard a train.

What is joy? What is “here”? Or sorrow, or “there”? “Here” is sorrow, to many on the train; ergo “there” must be joy. But nature twists and turns as the tracks sweep smoothly, endlessly, over the country. And sometimes joy and sorrow get muddled up in “wheres” and “elsewheres”, and sometimes they fall out of the train and onto the gravel and are lost.

And oftimes the joy we sought, and the sorrow we sought to flee, we carry behind us, stored up safe in the baggage car, or perhaps in a sleeper . . . And the joy and sorrow everywhere are just as deep, and just as true, wherever you run or ride to. But the sorrow is more true than the joy, for where there is deep joy, there is deeper sorrow; and sorrow is the stuff of which joy is knit.

Originally written March 21^st, 2002. Posted via Passage to Serendipity

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