Looking In.

photo credits: Daniel Yee

Every city looked the same to him. The trees, always skinny and tall, they all exuded an aura of death. The pavements, cement and bricks of different sorts, were always rough, stepped on rudely by people who were always in a rush, also often stained with tears and heaven knows what other kinds of filth. Every station was the same to him. The animals and insects were indistinguishable—cats, dogs, beetles, butterflies, all stray and identical. The people were always crying, always alone, always laughing, and always saying their hellos and goodbyes. He was tired of the places, the people, the sights and the sounds. But the train, oh, the train. It was always monstrously marching its way through time and space on the railroad tracks, mercilessly reducing all ambient noises to the wondrous sounds of chaotic chugging, pushing across all the earth with mighty strength, blowing away dandelions and daisies off their stalks if they were within the vicinity the colossal automaton. The train was a giant’s child, screaming and shrieking blithely. The intricacies of the huge machine’s mechanism fascinated him: he loved every little movement that the train made, how every moving part co-ordinates with every other moving part, breathing life into the machine and then proceeding to move the metal monster effortlessly at what seemed like the speed of sound. He held onto the train, purposefully ignorant of the sceneries, pushed his cap lower, and thought of distant medieval times, when if dragons existed.