Pay No Mind
The train pulls away from the station with me on it, and we surge to full speed. A train coming from the opposite direction passes by on an adjacent track. With quickness of focus I see my reflection upon the windows of the other speeding train, twice as fast from our own speed, a reflection glassy and ephemeral, and it is gone. The impression I am left with is me but not me; a man with long silver hair, motorcycle goggles pulled up onto his forehead, tan leather jacket: my future self, perhaps.
The idea is to be aware of him, to slow down, to sometimes stop going round and round. When you've seen as much as I have, you know there is a time to take things on, and a time to let them go. This is a time to let go. The coffee in the coffee cup in my gloved hands swirls calmly, like the ethos.
Estrangement and dread in equal measures, drifting and dissipating as so much dust. I dodge glances with the foreign man across from me and I know he sees what I see. He sees the great inexorable tide, and restrains himself from paddling. Paddling is what the helpless man does. We share this agreement for just a moment. And the rails of the track, cast so perfectly straight. Other tracks run with us, some end and others begin. Some are being dismantled. This all fits in a parietal sense.
I love the way I can keep my hands perfectly still, and the steam billowing from the rooftop of the building which is here and there, and the quickness of it all, and all of it tells me this is where I belong. This time is for me and the foreign man. And estrangement and dread are my good friends, and I hold them close, and I part ways for now. Ask me again in two days, and I will tell you I had not been happy. But put your hand on me now, with the littlest pressure, and see how you feel better. Just helping us go in the way we must go.
Someone plays piano alone in a dark room.
The idea is to be aware of him, to slow down, to sometimes stop going round and round. When you've seen as much as I have, you know there is a time to take things on, and a time to let them go. This is a time to let go. The coffee in the coffee cup in my gloved hands swirls calmly, like the ethos.
Estrangement and dread in equal measures, drifting and dissipating as so much dust. I dodge glances with the foreign man across from me and I know he sees what I see. He sees the great inexorable tide, and restrains himself from paddling. Paddling is what the helpless man does. We share this agreement for just a moment. And the rails of the track, cast so perfectly straight. Other tracks run with us, some end and others begin. Some are being dismantled. This all fits in a parietal sense.
I love the way I can keep my hands perfectly still, and the steam billowing from the rooftop of the building which is here and there, and the quickness of it all, and all of it tells me this is where I belong. This time is for me and the foreign man. And estrangement and dread are my good friends, and I hold them close, and I part ways for now. Ask me again in two days, and I will tell you I had not been happy. But put your hand on me now, with the littlest pressure, and see how you feel better. Just helping us go in the way we must go.
Someone plays piano alone in a dark room.
posted by Row of Streetlights at 12:38 PM
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