more and more appears among us to the side. one should observe precisely the little things; go after them.
---e. bloch.
vastness, the sublime, are not so much as terrifying as boring.
dark purplish clouds stretch out across a cold motionless grey sky, a realm of frozen possibilities; death-like, but also, strangely, enlivening because the light is so clear. i look at my watch: 4:40 on a darkening winter afternoon must be the most perfect time in the world....always reminds me of sparklers and the faint smell of burning in the air...
from heathrow an elderly woman gets on the train with me. she pulls out a book at the same time. the god of small things vs richard ford's lay of the land-which is beginning to tire me with its chattiness and bagginess. we both, by chance, change at acton town and i know that she knows the secret: this is the only way to avoid the steps. she's english. i'm sure of that. serious reading spectacles, hair short and proper, the works. but also, curiously, she wears jeans and ankle-high black lather boots. pragmatic stock.
on the phone she speaks what appears to be fluent german. would have been good to have the dougal here to decipher. she runs out of german and switches back to the words she learnt in her childhood. the uncanniness of having other people's lives fleet past one's eyes, their trajectory briefly overlapping with yours. uncanny: at home and strange. the strangeness of other people mirroring your own. augustine: we are strangers to ourselves.
there's something of celia in her looks, i think to myself. then at mile end we both change again and move to exactly the same place on the platform (no doubt to get off at woodford). i look out for her now, amongst the crowded carriage and hard english faces with their tight lips, short noses and grave thoughts...the strange unphilosophical inwardness, shyness of the english.
i need her to stay on this train. is this how god will judge us: by our needs or our desires? after half an hour together we've already thrown off the exotic airs that travelers have about them as they return to the interpreted world. so i need her to remind me that i'm still a stranger here. her eyes have acclimatised now and don't move about so nervously now, having given up the vain attempt to take everything in. i see her looking wistfully at the other passengers. i look out dreamily into the night, beyond the reflected images, as the last clouds sink back into the enfolding darkness...
she reminds me, with her drowsy, droopy lower lip and her puffy cheeks of the swami. odd that we pick out in the other people we come across resemblances to people we know. i sometimes think to myself: because i've never seen roxana, nichole, or anton i'll never see traces of them in other people.
the train doors open and i lose her in the rush. it is cold and i am grateful for the warmth of my own body. i wish for nothing more at this moment than to be a child again, waiting in the darkness with my knife, my yellow cardigan, watched over by a god of small things, calling out to the blackness: who's there?
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11 comments:
b., thank you for letting us readers follow you on your trip
Sometimes, I want to be an old lady. Like the one in your story. I was in line at the grocery store Saturday night, and noticed something. The cashier was probably 16 and she was talking to a couple friends, who were standing behind her chatting. She looked and said hi, as my turn came. I imagined, what if I was eighty? What would her eyes look like then, as she briefly took me in? And I had that thought that when we're that age, things will look the same (although perhaps a little lower, and blocked by cataracts) But, people and experiences will be taken in through the same eyes I'm using right this moment. And vice versa, these are the same eyes that took in everything before now.
fl, you've got to read V.S. Pritchett's essay..can't remember what it's called now..I think it's : life at 80.
an excerpt from it can be found here
b hi, i was almost to send you a photo so that there always will be traces. that traces are such an important thing. i like your train story. sometimes i feel you are the most anti-intellectual intellectual :) that i know. but this is a good thing, this combination....
anton, you know just yesterday i stopped to pick up a book at random ..it was E. bloch's 'traces'. didn't buy it but i do want to go back to his principle of hope (which i never finished).
Yes, traces are important..signs of what is ahead and also of what has passed
I'm flattered by your comments (is there one of those :- faces for being embarrassed?)...now, if I could only lose the 'intellectual' bit...
Keep well,
b.
I have been travelling all day. i took your story with me, and every time I put my hands in my pocket to protect them from the cold, your story was there, like a warm, living stone. it was almost as if I had seen that woman in every face. and then I had to laugh: see what happens if one reads b's stories before travelling :-)
Ha! I feel like a djinn..I only have to mention your names and all of you appear, as if by magic, out of nowhere!:-)
Roxana, hello! :-)
I notice you've been very silent since winning all that money! Very suspicious, girl :-) Hmm. One wonders if-no, when-you become famous you'll even remember us.
Why were you travelling all day?
Keep well,
b.
pfffft, what does that have to do with a name? what's in a name?
it has to do with travelling, and the magic of it :-)
and I will never become famous, no matter what dearest a believes :-)
sure you will, r. :)
Roxana, it's not the name per se..you're right..but who says it and how they say it (as the master magician would say)
what on earth is pffft? is it like our "ufff!!!"
anton is right here...you *will* be famous and then you'll invite us all over to wherever you're from for tea and marmalade on toast.
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