blathing_on_a_train raze i've never done this before, but i'm doing it now, the free via rail wifi not dicey like the last time, one city soon to become another, and another, until the increments of becoming are too fast to touch and too slow to miss. the whistle sounds, and it isn't a whistle at all. it's more of a wail. 131218 ... raze there's a train going the other way carrying a chemical or a gas in dark cars like swollen canisters cutting through falling snow like steam, and then it's gone and the only snow is on the ground. 131218 ... raze trees stand with their naked fingers outstretched, pointing at nothing, pointing at everything, their metabolisms slowed to a crawl. and then there are the conifers still in their clothes, shrugging off the cold. 131218 ... raze a meeting of birds is breaking up. i hope someone on the committee remembered to take minutes. 131218 ... raze fireworks on the back of the seat in front of me. and so fireworks on the back of mine. 131218 ... raze fields and fields of snow and snow and fading sun and now you know. what_do_i_know? and what_dream_is_this? 131218 ... raze now up high enough to fall and then low enough to crawl parking lot city street wait another hour to eat 131218 ... raze e minor. i think that's the key the whistle that's really a wail is in. it wails a muddled fifth. a minor-leaning fifth. it's not a joyous sound. it's not a mournful sound. it's a sound. a minor-leaning sound. a sound that belongs to the slow-forming night. 131218 ... raze now it sounds very minor, and not like a fifth at all. 131218 ... raze and it's e flat, half a step down from where i thought it was. i'm sure of it. 131218 ... raze almost total darkness now. the streetlights are fireflies. 131218 ... raze "you are where you were going," says the train. "get out of me and stretch your legs." so i am. so i will. so i do. 131218 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I like this quote by someone called Alvarny in a blathe you linked to: "What I do know is that between dreams and reality, I am the bridge." Did I read that you were going west? Or did I only imagine it? The last time I used the computer on the train, going between Montreal and Toronto (or was it Toronto and St. Catharines? 'twas one part of that tiresome two-leg trip) the wifi was surprisingly good. Faster than that at the local biblio. They also have rather good food, but it's getting more and more expensive. 131218 ... e_o_i Corrections of sorts - Two-leg trip: I meant one in two parts, not one undertaken on two legs. Because that would take a long time. Biblio: Library. I've called it that since I was a kid. Short form of French bibliothèque. Gah. This reminds me of Sally the South Carolinian I worked with at summer camp, specifically the way she thought I was snobby when I tossed around French words without thinking. Then again, she had a habit of inventing fake Spanish by adding -dad to the end of nouns, e.g. "We're going back to the cabinidad." She's funny. I miss talking to her. But yes. Have a good trip. Have a good trip. 131218 ... e_o_i rhymes a bit How did I write that twice? I have a cold. But I also have a brain. And I'm not even on a train. 131218 ... raze you wrote it twice because saying it twice makes it twice as nice! but even if you only meant to write it once, i thank you. i am in toronto briefly, eating waffles, and then i will be home again, eating not-waffles. (the wifi was surprisingly good for me this time too...last time it was hilariously slow. and i like that quote too. and i hope your cold is soon warmed into leaving.) 131219 ... e_o_i For some reason I remember you writing you were going to Saskatchewan. It'd be nice to look around Toronto a bit. In the span of a year and a half I was there maybe twelve times - but it was only a stop in between parts of a trip. I'm sure there's more to Toronto than a bus and train station! (Or maybe it's one big combination bus-train station, just like Montreal is secretly a giant laboratory for a linguistic anthropology experiment. Er... I mean an island. Just an island. Forget I said anything.) 131219 ... e_o_i like diamonds in the sky True of me at the present. The sun is shining and the person next to me is some kind of writer. Mutual working respect, even if I was just doing boring proofreading. Everyone is my friend and everyone relates somehow when the sun is shining, except when people want to sleep and then you close the curtain, but everyone sleeps sometimes. 160902 ... e_o_i "Montreal is secretly a giant laboratory for a linguistic anthropology experiment." Aha. I had the secret knowledge all along, I just forgot I had it. 211020 ... e_o_i But I am on a train! It just stopped at Oshawa station, and I'm getting off at the next stop. Allowing myself a bit of a break because I finished the rough copy of a response paper about octopuses. For a linguistics class. 211020 ... tender_square i shuttled into the future with my back to what was coming. rain rattled the double panes, their drops drifting comets against glass. the car was quiet, save for the occasional cough, the rustle of wind-breaking jackets. overhead light layered in double-exposure over nature: hillsides of dirt and derelict fences, rural roads and scattered straw marking the edge of every lot line. pickup trucks loitered listlessly at the blink of cherry pulses bisecting town. a concert of conifers held their naked limbs in the air and ravines wrinkled with rainwater. we stopped in kalamazoo. we stopped in battle creek. we stopped in hammond whiting. i thought about disembarking in a place that wasn’t my intended destination: the sky a sketchbook ready for the press of pencil, a smear of shade. every word i read made me miss him. the wifi was spotty and i couldn’t steal away from my seat without notice. i searched for him in the changing scenes of glistening pavement and corrugated roofs, in an assembly of ash and green fields outstretching, in a wind cone packed with a punch of gust. a blackbird beat its wings for as far as it could follow; my ghostly handprint on the glass reached for its feathers. 220503 ... tender_square on the outskirts of the windy city, a woman aimed her camera at another woman (a friend? a sister?) on the grasses where ducks and geese intermingled. a worker in a neon vest smoked conspicuously on crushed stone between tracks. the ditches swelled with the murk of runoff and a rainbow of crushed plastic. yachts gathered in snobbish cliques, still shrink-wrapped for winter and later, towering turbines stood like inert pinwheels, waiting for god's breath. in a shadowed gallery of tunnels and overpasses, the most impressive graffiti artists pressed index to nozzle in a sprawling energy of curve and colour. we stopped in bloomington-normal. we stopped in springfield, home of lincoln. we stopped in small towns, romantic in their simplicity, misleading with murals of imaginary storefronts. the further south we chugged, warmer temperatures birthed an explosion of chartreuse and pear, and trees like rabid fans stretched limbs for a touch of train. i lost connection the farther we got from pockets of city, bars disappearing. and i longed for him, burning in the distance as refinery fires at dusk, glistened jewels of cobalt light in the heat of transformation. 220505 ... tender_square monstrous trees slid into the frame of st. louis’s archway in the distance as we slid from forest to city, nature to industry. my nose burned from ammonia’s intensity, the scent of piss-and-pesticide soaked fields. overnight we’d pass through the rest of missouri and all of arkansas before reaching the northeast corner of texas. i took the top bunk and a seatbelt harness kept me from tumbling out of bed, the wall hammered against my back as the train listed left, listed right. how could one sleep when one was in constant motion? every ache manifested in the dark: my clicking hip, my cramping back, my calling heart. i couldn’t rest in that shaky tomb without his voice singing “death ain’t quite what you expected, but it’s prettier than the last place.” i turned to watch my mesa of shadow against the wall, made possible by the hallway light that crept through the upper crack of door. when ricardo, our sleeping car attendant, woke us with morning announcements at 7, i was surprised to see sunlight beyond the blackout curtains as we slowed through marshall, texas. 220506 ... kerry [love this. i feel like i’m traveling with you] 220506 ... tender_square two men in yellow vests and hard hats descend a hill in the same hurried gait that children use. the conductors horn-howl through every residential area, vacant and boarded or no. a mosquito enters the cabin, and i smash its wings against the tray table, the napkin showing it had not yet filled with my blood. mom texted of tornado warnings and the sky darkened as veins of running rain rushed glass. all this layering: magnetic fields interspersed with dumped living room accoutrements, pelted with precipitation, in a frame of black rubber and the title “emergency exit.” the thiiiiiiiiick of cards being shuffled by the hands of the universe, collected into piles for rummy. we raced alongside transport trucks that stopped for lights, while we plowed through intersections of protective arms. in dallas, the curlicues of highway expelled traffic from a common center, and the grotesque glass of a hyatt regency was as big and superficial as the city itself. lightning forked a field. a tree flashed it silver-whiskered smile. alpacas sweat in black sweaters under the dry heel of heat. the splits between freight cars traveling in the opposite direction made the landscape a dizzying zoetrope. and when we finally stepped off the platform with our luggage, my cells were shaking. 220506 ... tender_square [thank you, kerry! that means the world to me.] 220506 ... tender_square food truck taquerias set up shop in the shadows of the freeway's stretch. in sleepy parishes, bulldozers and excavators are toys unused by townsmen. the stillness of swamp shore is broken by a thousand green isles where refineries cough clouds like a distant, toxic oz. root-rocked blue beech faint into the laden arms of red cedar, unglued from ground by heaving sighs. i am on my way back home; the gypsy in the square said i have already made up my mind. the bones of bridges crumble into algae, showing me the way to let it happen. nausea curdles the nutrients my bloodstream has yet to absorb when the scenery pulls in a pattern of dizzying blur and slow revelation. to excavate a curve of earthen levee, blow and brush dust from tool and trim, to hand these forgotten pieces to him. i want to pluck and sew each doily of queen anne's lace that towers railside into a dress i'll wear when we're reunited. a corona of light lingers on woodlands of crocodile and juniper in anticipatory caress. 220517 ... e_o_i mentally edits trains I admire your eye for detail! Currently, I just have the dour observation that the food on the VIA train went from being good and overpriced to pathetic and still overpriced. I believe in trains, but they need to be edited. 220820 ... e_o_i Thanks to the Deutsche Bahn's wifi, although I'm not quite as grateful for them delaying the trip an hour and then making us get off at the wrong stop. It will be an adventure getting back to Kassel. 230604 ... e_o_i Seven minutes to Brockville. Thin but dense blowing snow flies past my window, whitening the dark sticks of trees. 240109 ... e_o_i (How does "thin but dense" make sense? I mean in small particles but close together. Trying for poetricity, ending in confusion.) 240109 ... e_o_i Frozen puddles in plains, bent trees in a forest. A few minutes to Ottawa. Then I anticipate connection, pause, lunch. 240224 ... e_o_i ...or rather pause, lunch, connection. The loudspeaker says: Please ensure you have all your personal belongings with you. Is word order personal? Is it with me? Noam Chomsky would say yes, it's a product of the speaker's brain; Mark Hale might add that the writing act is conscious, therefore post-processing. Maybe. A post to process. 240224 ... e_o_i I mean speaking is conscious too, it involves choices, it's just that there are also unconscious grammatical processes according to them. I'm not making sense, so I need to pack things up. 240224 ... pony Semantically, I think you're referring to syntax and diction, both of which are indeed personal, governed to whatever conscious degree or not by the rules of grammar. As for in January, thin but dense does make sense, if you consider thick to be the opposite of thin, and sparse that of dense. e_o_i, your monologues and self-scrutiny mesmerize, please excuse my redundancy. 240224 ... e_o_i Nothing to excuse! The way you set out those opposite pairs makes a lot of sense. I like to think I have some writing skills, but that kind of word-level precision usually escapes me. 240224 ... e_o_i (Blathing on another train, by the way. A trip with a rhyming A & B, Ottawa to Oshawa.) 240224 ... e_o_i Across from me there's a double seat with a table in the middle. Two people, a couple probably, are both asleep, so I can stare out the window. Plains stretch out from the foreground to a highway and trees - now we're right next to some main town streets and there are grain silos - now back to the fields. A snack cart is coming around, but I have water and an apple in my bag. 240528 ... e_o_i I didn't on the nation-wide train line named after a preposition (VIA), so I will on the local train line named after a verb (GO). ...which reminds me that Montreal is behind Toronto in one thing - not a crucial thing, but a useful one nevertheless: having wifi in municipal trains. Step up your act, Exo! 240801 ... e_o_i Also, GO trains have a better logo - simple but compact, elegant. A "T" runs sideways through the two letters, at once making their delineation clearer and adding more content: Go to, T for Toronto, TO for Toronto. Or GTO for Grand Theft Ontario, that video game where you steal Ontario (or at least its graphic designers, because it seems they have good ones). 240801 what's it to you? who go blather from