well that was disappointing

The doors open, and we enter. There are three tones, the first and the last are the same; the second is a third higher than the first and the last. We look up the compartments for an open seat or two, maybe even three. There are no open seats. There are no places to stand, we push a little bit into the the crowd inside. People push from behind, people push from the front. The doors close, we depart. We look again up the compartments towards the front of the train, this time a bit longer than before. We look again back down the compartments to the back of the train, maybe a bit shorter than before. There are the same amount of people as before. The train picks up speed and leaves the station. We look at each other, our mouths move faintly and our eyes register the movements of our mouths, our brains sort out the meaning of these things and the wheels click faster over the tracks, down the line, towards the next station.

Behind us there are three people, two men and one woman. They are huddled in on each other, the closeness strangers share in a public place, sharing a bit of warmth all rolled up tight in black down bundles, hats tugged down deep, scarves wrapped high, zippers pulled as far as they will go. Tiny bits of white skin, nervous twitching brown eyes, softly scanning blue eyes. In front of us are two youths, sullen and silent behind wispy beards and mistrusting eyes. Dirty fingernails and baggy pants. They may very well not even be there but they are there, watching like mice from the inside of tunnel. Their boots scratch on the salty-wet gravel covered  floor.

We enter a tunnel, our pupils dilate. The lights flicker on, our pupils contract and then we leave the tunnel. Sunlight streams into the compartment from the right side. We turn like plants, we bend and we grow and we stretch to see this rarity. We push and pull and find ourselves crammed against the glass panel of the door. I watch your pupils contract even more, I watch your breath flicker and condense, and evaporate again, a small sign of life on a dirty pane of plexiglass halfway between two stations. I watch your eyes, almost completely blue. We are all staring, searching, reaching off far to the right.

The usual chatter has grown muffled. I can no longer hear the woman next to me discussing renovations to her apartment, and this heated debate between an old man and his daughter pertaining to the rising price of coffee has all but dropped off. Even you and I, we are silent. We don't talk about the rent; we don't discuss our plans for the balcony garden in the springtime. The train slows but we are nowhere near a station, there is no announcement explaining the short delay and the passengers do not complain about how it can be possible to delay an already delayed train. We do not grimace at each other, no further snide remarks were exchanged.

Where is this going? Where are we going? I play out a scene in my head: all of us, all hundred or so passengers gazing silently and contentedly out the window. We gaze. Our eyes follow the minute movement of the sun. Those who sit, remain seated. Those who stand, remain standing. We follow the slow and steady traveling star across the sky; we are plants and we only need the shining energy absorbed through thick down jackets and heavy hats and fluffy scarves.

This is ridiculous, I think, interrupted by an angry buzzing as of bees, or of an old car with fender damage. We are not silent, we are not satisfied by the sudden arrival of a star that has seemingly abandoned us this whole time. There are vague grunts of displeasure off to my right, there are outright expressions of outrage from my rear. We are enraged. We expected a service here! You can't treat us like that! We are disappointed, we are betrayed. How could you do such a thing? For we are only human and as humans only expect what we deserve. The last thing we deserved was such an act of atrocity- You left us alone between stations, you allowed us to scratch in the dark for two weeks. We were powerless all this time- we were trapped animals and the temperature dropped. Our blood thickened and our fucking heads got dull, yeah? We couldn't even think the whole time you were gone! Jesus, what were you thinking treating us like that?

There is a barely apologetic announcement, the train lurches to a start, the voices die down again. I repeat the same thing over and over until we arrive at the next station. Where was the sun this morning?

The doors open, there are three tones, and we exit.

finding my voice

Let’s talk about loneliness. Let’s talk about anything. Let’s talk about anything other than loneliness. Let’s strike up a conversation. No. Really, let’s strike up a conversation that will take us anywhere else but here. Does this need any clarification at all? Do I need to explain why we need to go anywhere else but here? There are lots of reasons why we need to go away. We need to leave. We need to leave everything we know behind. We need to venture out into the distant treeline. We need to talk through the woods and hear the snow crunch under our boots. We need to inhale deeply and feel the cold prickle our nose-hairs. We listen now. We listen to the noises surrounding us in this dim late afternoon light. We hear the crunch of the snow under out boots. We hear the dry flutter of feathers. We hear tiny bird claws on bark. We hear beaks. We hear beak on wood.

Of course there is a bird. Of course, it begins with this little bird, jetting from limb to limb in the snowy forest somewhere far away from here. This little bird looks frantically at us. It stares and we of course, we stare right back. It’s right in front of us. Its eyes are dry and red and black. Its plumage grey and black and blue. It knows. What does it know? Does it know about us? Does it wonder why we’ve come here? Does the bird think that we are good people? Does the bird know that we are not good people? Are we good people? Are we alive? Are we close?

We are far away now, wandering down a road through the woods in the half dark of late afternoon. We are deep in the blue, we are deep in the black. We exist somewhere in-between. We are not from here, but we are growing ever closer to our goal. We are not here, and we are not there. But we left where we were, and we are getting ever closer. We hear the crunch of the snow beneath our boots and the occasional snap of a branch or a twig buried underneath the snow. Underneath the branches and the twigs, underneath the thin wispy blanket of snow, there are many more things on which we tread. We walk further and hear noises. We don’t hear the scratch crackle of leaves anymore. The leaves are wet and cold and half-decomposed. The leaves now are not the same as the leaves on which we tread several months ago. Then, they were dry and orange. Sometimes yellow, sometimes red. We know this, we remember this. We know what leaves are, and we know what leaves look like. Do you remember what leaves look like when they lie on the ground in the cool autumn afternoon? Do you remember what they look like? Do you know what one leaf looks like on a tree? I see many leaves; I never see a single leaf.

Up a hill, farther away from where we are now, closer to where we are not. Down in the valley, across a small stream that twists and tangles and gurgles through our minds. Over a black stream, up another hill and all the while, we think about that black stream, about all that ends in the stream. Everything that ends in the stream begins somewhere else, and everything that begins in the stream ends. The stream continues it’s slow and gurgly stream speech. It tells of small things. It speaks of itself, a small stream that only becomes smaller as you follow it up the hill, towards it’s source. It only gets smaller if you take that road. And when we follow the stream down the hill, it becomes larger, it swells and shrinks and twists and is the home for a thousands small things, a million smaller lives bustling and eating and mating and of course dying. The stream becomes low and flat, and ends bustling and wide along the sandy bank, its low flat sand-tongue lapping up the water that has come from everywhere. That tongue laps and laps but always remains.

Or does it? We were there once and the tongue was certainly longer, wider and flatter. It has curled up now, swollen and grown round. It is preparing to speak, slowly receding and swelling and organizing the air around it, ready to send out a single syllable into the cold and wet air there where the stream and the river meet, across the river from the old factories and rusted-out railcars. Can you guess what it will say? Will we understand it? Will we be moved? Will it be topical? The tree pierces the tongue, like it always has. A single tree, stretching out diagonal and spidery into the misty air, reaching high over the rusty factory skeleton, skewing my perspective. The tree remains constant, growing slowly and steadily with roots deep in that sandy tongue and even further down in the river-rock, growing slowly but strongly on everything that has begun and ended in that river, in that stream that meet and become one next to the tongue, under the waxing and waning shade of the summer tree, of the winter tree.

How big will the tongue be next time? Will it continue to recede and rage upwards against the teeth of the world? Will it force back the air? Will it unleash it’s single plosive? Will we be there when it speaks? The tongue will release the air gathered behind it and the air will rush outwards, past the teeth and the lips and move out into the world, out into the cold and wet air. It will fly past the factory and the hills, rising ever and rising steadily. That single letter, that single message will overpower the gurgling of the stream and the rushing of the river and the scratching of the bird. The message will be heard but the message will not be repeated. Who will repeat it? Who will be able to pronounce it?