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.
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