There’s this huge advantage of train-travelling which is often overlooked, though it’s a rare enough gift these days : the gift of distracted, drifting moments.
You couldn’t possibly afford them when you’re driving a car, or even just riding a bicycle - reactive concentration rules then.
But when you stand there waiting on a platform …… idle…… looking vaguely around …..you can find these lost moments - ”the distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight” (*)
These drifting moments are there to dazzle you, even when you’re on a no-nonsense early morning train, diligently going through work-documents, worrying about an upcoming meeting.
Yes, even to purposeful business travelers, a train offers the saving grace of looking out of the window. And of being enchanted by a wintry landscape whitened by rime, where a battle of lights is going on: limpid morning sunlight blending with the hovering haloes of car-lights and street-lamps.
(*) TS Eliot – The Dry Salvages
5 comments:
a highly underrated and an almost abandoned hobby now for most, 'time to stand and stare'.
and might I say, a humble and innocuous way to listen in to the silent cosmic 24x7 podcast.
ha! so no deplorable out-of-stepness with the current times - but actually listening to a 24/24 podcast! :-)
;-D just hoping to sound uber cool by throwing terms around.
but hey, on revisiting the thought, applying XxY slots to the timeless seems ridiculous and so human, does it not?
lol hey, but we do have to stay tuned in to the timeless! round the clock! ;-D
bummer, so no escaping the clock thing then...silly humans... :-D
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