Train Sense
What is it with muses and travel?
She visited me again this morning on the train. No hello, no greeting, just a quantum eyeblink and she existed. As if my mind accidentally lined up with her plane of reality, making her flesh in my life again.
Last time she gave me a gift. This time she handed me a toolbox I forgot I owned.
Her fingers pulled my eyelids wide and she pointed my nose to the window. “Drink,” she told me. And my eyes obeyed, drinking in all the details and seeing every facet of life as a different story each woven together into the fabric of existence. The leaves filled me. The stones beside the track each begged to be thrown. The pieces of trash on the road spoke of the discarded memories skittering along beside them as the wind pushed them along. A tortured artist had painted “LIAR” on a cinderblock wall in three different places, as if practicing penmanship. A man kneels on a dock on a glittering lake to propose to the love of his life.
She stood in front of me, casually occupying the vast emptiness between nucleus and electron. She touched my nose. “Eat,” she told me. And the endless buffet of scents rushed in. The burning rubber of the brakes salted liberally with the diesel fumes of the engine filled my plate. Vinyl and sweat from my seat went down like French onion soup, rich with possibility and crusted with the mundane made exquisite. Sides of perfume, aftershave, and shampoo lent a human cast to the heavy industrial flavor of the train. My own clothing carried a dessert tray full of memory, each one glittering and winking in the air around me.
She touched my ears. “Look,” she told me. And I saw the clack and rumble of the train dance in front of me clothed in oranges and metallic blues. Voices shot sine waves of yellow and green through my vision, and the rustle of newspaper left soft footprints of white around the edges. The insistent air conditioner fan blew a red streak diagonally down and to the left. Picasso and Dali had teamed up and turned sound waves into an ocean’s crash of color.
She touched my forehead. “Hear,” she told me. A cacophony rose up from within me, each voice a tiny narrative in a different tongue. Some explained a single action over and over. Others carried the essence of entire lives distilled into a few words. The voices pushed the colored sounds until they danced to the cadence of the words, swirling together like slurry waiting to be molded into paper. Each one waited for connection, for someone to take the raw materials and craft a finished product. I knew the cords braided from these tiny threads would bind a story together.
She smiled. “Enjoy,” she said, and I was alone on the train once more.
“Thank you,” I replied. “See you soon.”
And I began to write.
She visited me again this morning on the train. No hello, no greeting, just a quantum eyeblink and she existed. As if my mind accidentally lined up with her plane of reality, making her flesh in my life again.
Last time she gave me a gift. This time she handed me a toolbox I forgot I owned.
Her fingers pulled my eyelids wide and she pointed my nose to the window. “Drink,” she told me. And my eyes obeyed, drinking in all the details and seeing every facet of life as a different story each woven together into the fabric of existence. The leaves filled me. The stones beside the track each begged to be thrown. The pieces of trash on the road spoke of the discarded memories skittering along beside them as the wind pushed them along. A tortured artist had painted “LIAR” on a cinderblock wall in three different places, as if practicing penmanship. A man kneels on a dock on a glittering lake to propose to the love of his life.
She stood in front of me, casually occupying the vast emptiness between nucleus and electron. She touched my nose. “Eat,” she told me. And the endless buffet of scents rushed in. The burning rubber of the brakes salted liberally with the diesel fumes of the engine filled my plate. Vinyl and sweat from my seat went down like French onion soup, rich with possibility and crusted with the mundane made exquisite. Sides of perfume, aftershave, and shampoo lent a human cast to the heavy industrial flavor of the train. My own clothing carried a dessert tray full of memory, each one glittering and winking in the air around me.
She touched my ears. “Look,” she told me. And I saw the clack and rumble of the train dance in front of me clothed in oranges and metallic blues. Voices shot sine waves of yellow and green through my vision, and the rustle of newspaper left soft footprints of white around the edges. The insistent air conditioner fan blew a red streak diagonally down and to the left. Picasso and Dali had teamed up and turned sound waves into an ocean’s crash of color.
She touched my forehead. “Hear,” she told me. A cacophony rose up from within me, each voice a tiny narrative in a different tongue. Some explained a single action over and over. Others carried the essence of entire lives distilled into a few words. The voices pushed the colored sounds until they danced to the cadence of the words, swirling together like slurry waiting to be molded into paper. Each one waited for connection, for someone to take the raw materials and craft a finished product. I knew the cords braided from these tiny threads would bind a story together.
She smiled. “Enjoy,” she said, and I was alone on the train once more.
“Thank you,” I replied. “See you soon.”
And I began to write.