Around the Bend: Trains (1)

There’s something about train stations and Mars-the canals (perhaps Percival planted that seed), No-the subversion, Martian-ness of this group travel, the train itself evocative of not just red and coal, gases and defiance, power, toxicity, it’s the Industry of it. And there is where one will certainly find the great hidden labyrinths below ground like in Paris. The romantic always interjects, yes, that is the fascination, the obsession, the fear, the fix of revolt and intrigue, our responsive, elemental self, raw and open to receiving. I see the train and I think I’ve seen it before. Not this one, not the ones in my town, in my lifetime.  The station itself, a hub I never frequented but feel at home. It is because it is so familiar, the sounds of multiple people bubbles jumping around one central location barely aware of one another, the sounds of such business on high and then a momentary hush, a warm wind and everyone suddenly remembers they are in the same place as others, going somewhere that is not here-together-today-anyway.

My grandfather was in the song “Morning Train” by Sheena Easton-not really, but it is certainly about him taking the morning train into the city-my grandmother would pick him up at the station in the evening with “the car” and notoriously kick up her left foot when they kissed before making the 40 minute drive home into the suburbs. That is true. I think he’s waiting for me at the train station, anytime he may be on one of the trains I impatiently anticipate that infallibly has nobody on it that I know, but I smile at them anyway since everyone likes to be welcomed home-even by a stranger at the train station thinking about the tunnels on Mars. 

Image By War Office official photographer, Horton (Cpt) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. W. Churchill waiting @ train station. 

Oboe We Are

We should treat ourselves as our finest instrument. An instrument we have gotten to know how to use over the years and the end goal of mastery is to become experts on our instruments, with our instruments, and yet all of us fumble a bit forgetting how it works, or neglecting the care and maintenance, turning our blind eye to the wear and tear and ultimately living our lives as though our instruments are a responsibility, our onus, our gift or curse, whatever, but existing outside of us. Our instrument is something we use to show how we do it.

For comparison sake I will compare thee to a woodwind. While neither you nor I need be musically tuned in any way I shall show is absolutely not necessary for full comprehension of this apt comparison. First and foremost, we are full of hot air. Likewise we need fine or general tuning before use. We can hear ourselves louder than anyone else. It doesn’t match what others hear. We can feel when we are off. We drool at the chance to be heard, to toot our own horns. And we, humans, all of us, bellow constantly whether in unison or solo, we think we sound better than we do. So if the oboe is our onus we should get to know its best notes, as the ugly duckling of Peter and the Wolf, we should know our part, play up our assets, and practice our skills, lightly.

Sadly, practice is hard, Practice is work, redundant work, it’s like work practicing.

No two oboes play the same, even with similar construction. I am an oboe, though, I have negative 12% musical talent, I hear myself, my oboeness and just recently I have been cleaning, properly storing and regularly my instrument. I’d even like to learn some new tunes once I become proficient at anything. Somedays I can’t even blow a note, so I admire what it can do while not having to waste my breath.  My oboe knows my moods, my pitch, my flaws, my touch, my lips, my song, and especially when my notes are all wrong.  

Practice does not make pitch perfect, but it does make it easy listening.  

Like the great Yogism goes, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” 

Image by Thomas Eakins [Public domain], The Oboe Player (1903), via Wikimedia Commons.

Plan Z

When? Then?
Now? Now then. Back when-
between now and then. In the past, not alive as "in" the past or as buried under, down in the back where, back when we want-
Now.
It's alive again and then it never was, is, has been-
Been stalling for some time, stall, a place to park, in the shade-time wasted, delayed, squandered, gone...it's going even now even though we don't feel it unless we move too fast or not at all, I never knew it had been now or never, nothing, measurable, nothing pleasurable comes, becomes a fleetin moment, a palpitation unmentionable and broken. A sinking feeling of tummy twists leaden, plummeting in silence, stillness eludes, discontent stacks past seconds, more, thirds, everything and their firsts waiting for someone, not you-anymore.
See? Where has the time gone now?
Exactly where you left it,
behind you, projecting your history on to others coming up back there as you race forward,
late for the future-again.


Image By Abbie Rowe, 1905-1967, Photographer (NARA record: 8451352) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons of reporters rushing through the White House, 8/14/1945. 

Your desire

I object. I object to getting along. I object to making peace. I object to having hope. I object to giving volume and shape to such soundless and weightless objects. I object to mapping Babel, decoding dark matter, and documentation as fact. I object material wealth, gains of ills, drowning in debt, planning on procrastination, delaying destiny, fabricated faith, and all other coat racks collecting dust.  I object to forgetting yourself like a name since it’s only a temporary assignment.  I object the image. I project your image. An object you cannot touch. I object possession. I am not an object of possession. 

Image of painting by Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten 1664 [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.