notes from a train...

i prefer to sit with my back to the direction of travel, by a window, with a table for my coffee. Hills unfold, flying backwards down the tracks, converging to a point, beyond sight, towards the horizon. puffy clouds resolve to sheep, ancient stone barns... the strobe flash of a passing freight train -- blue cars alternating with green pastures. steam curls up from the paper cup. concentric rings ripple outwards from the liquid centre -- kinetic energy, vibration, waves, caffiene, imagination, perspective.

we rocket through a valley of gray, dotted with brown sandstone houses with asphalt roofs. smokestacks issue white smoke. the sky is pigeon coloured. we are flying through a thin mist, casting an uncertain spell on distance. can never be sure of what lies beyond my nose. even that i'm not sure of. it's all beyond me.

some just write. tell what is seen. pay attention. find life in specifics, not content to let them fly by at 150kmh. discrimination is not prejudice. a second of close attention reveals life in anything. gleeful, shady disorganized life. stubbornly resisting stultification. life being fundamentally free, amorphous, feeling, fleeting.

others write from a place of internal vision, eyes closed, with complete faith that these landscapes are the only ones on the horizon. they sit on the other side of the table watching the landscape rush towards them with one eye, the other resolved inwards. gods of their own domains. such vision burns through and arrives unsullied, unwavering & unchanging, right or wrong, clinging to the kernel of truth that flared like a falling star to land ... god only knows where.

so we fly west, perched in the crows nest, swaying side to side, gripping at rigging. some looking back cross stormy seas to "Europa", our immediate origins, others looking forwards beyond the storm to "The Indies", gold, spice & even older origins. but the world always turns out bigger and more varied than we imagine. and we land in some new place entirely, whose connection to us is older than our collective memories allow, yet still part of this mosaic we, bits of crushed pottery, tile, stone, found object, detritus & floatsam, organized to a picture requiring perspective greater than ours to discern.

life. vast beyond the minds even of angels... incomplete, even in the most expansive dreams.