Ever since she started walking we ‘ve been taking trains and walking the city and taking trains. In spring and summer days, we would sit on the station benches and watch them pass by, she loved that; I loved her loving that.
Not so much the passengers hoping on and off I think, but the sequence, and the timespace it can create to the observer. Meditative somehow, and within its urban metal noises, peaceful.
She also loved to wave to all drivers as they drove into the station, one of these little-great miracles of hers. Some of them (the not totally defeated ones) did notice.
A dynamic process, just like her, riding trains then came to be more detailed. A closer, more involved observation begun. A kind of experiencing of city qualities, mobility and sensitivities in people’s faces and body movement. She was growing up now, becoming specific like we all inevitably do.
So at early nighttime (when the populations switch) we would research into, chat and laugh with youngsters on their night out.
At daytime, we would also come across the outcasts (beggars, addicts, homeless) brothers and sisters in bad luck and extreme difficulty. We would discuss not only the whys and hows but also what we could do as an act of support; then, in the right circumstances, we would do it.
Then the threat struck. Sadness, anger, fear, took hold of us. Trains (or us?) lost their weightless transience and innocence all of a sudden. They became another stage set to our fight for survival, (our fight not to lose each other). One time, she lost her only glass rock. She was devastated. It made perfect sense. Almost everything was difficult then for her (and for me); especially losing things.
Our start and end destinations, kept on changing, confusing us, disorientating us, uprooting us.
As Stephan (who had gone through similar shit) had told me, I had to accept that Sisyphus was a happy guy. Since I never liked have to’s and I wasn’t Stephan, I thought, fuck that. So I led, I bled, lost, over and over again, until I won her back, until I could bring us back.
She? She did the most important thing, she did not give up on me.
It took an eternity (around one year) for us to win this impossible fight, but win we did. Then, things begun to open. My inevitably loud voice, her overall light and the content of our discussions often attracted attention. We met people of all ages and nationalities, creating half-wagon sized shinny discussion/interaction groups; we were strong and free together, again.
Trains are fixed track public transport machines, scheduled vessels that move.
For us, they are a gateway to transcendence, just like everything else can be.
Maybe I myself am a train to her as well as a passenger in her evolving avenue to the world.
Maybe or even definitely, we are both on a constant train ride to utopia; our utopia (sometimes it so feels like that).
So sweetness, keep taking trains, alone or with company in the years to come. They can be magical, almost as magical as my jacket over your legs while you nap; almost as magical as the love between a father and a daughter.
See you on the train, Wednesday.
a f.n.f. .