Reading on the train

[vaneramos]

There’s something romantic about the strange, headlong, rollicking motion of a train. You’re tearing across open farmland, and it feels like one slight jolt might shake your mind off the wave of inertia and leave it irretrievably behind, wandering through nameless wheat fields, or along a small, forsaken rural boarding platform where only ghosts await passage.

Along the line from Windsor to London yesterday, woodlands came crowding over the landscape to meet the train, bearing the first lusty chartreuse blush of life. Wild cherries in bridal white skittered like startled virgins beyond the uplifted interstices of dark-branched panes. Then the car would burst into open landscape again, where countless red-winged blackbirds mounted from fence rails, dark cherubim heralding the return of passion and property. Their lusty cries echoed out of memory through the sliding, shuddering window.

I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, but felt my attention divided between page and passage, afraid that I might lose a thread of meaning from either story. Or perhaps, with the crowd of images passing my eyes, take either one too seriously. Wilde barrages the mind with wisdom and delusions of wisdom. One must remain vigilant to the vernal bloom of irony.

Comments

Gratuitous Icon Comment

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

*happy sigh* Yeah... Yum, and thanks!

Crazy(and a fan of trains)Soph

Re: Gratuitous Icon Comment

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks for the train!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It's great, isn't it? The same Southern Ontario landscape, so flat and tedious by car, is entrancing when viewed through a train window.

[ubermunkey.livejournal.com]

of my time in sweden
train rides are on my top ten most mist things list

some of the adventures on trains well they changed my life

from getting lost on a friday night in some small town wandering into a party being the escorts for a young lady seeing her home safely, don't even remember her name, to the solitude often found in the rocking rolling movement from one area one companion to the next

to the afternoon spent with one of my all time favorites companions (young) with a loaf of bread some great cheese and mile after mile of lovely swedish country side. really lovely images you share Van

be well

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Amazing images there, Connor. Thanks for sharing a glimpse of them. Kinda wish I could have been there, especially sharing the bread and cheese. I have never experienced Europe, but I hope to someday.

[ubermunkey.livejournal.com]

from the glimpses I get of you ( no pun intended ) from your journaling, I can only imagine that you would love it.

taking a train to a remote town, being let off at the station which is usually near the town square, and wandering around the city, really great adventures.

one day you'll experience it and when that day comes I hope you journal about it and take pics.

be well

[mattcallow.livejournal.com]

I really miss trains. For nearly all my adult life I didn't own a car and so trains were my primary source of travel, for long and short distances. Then I moved to the US...

ps. "vigilant to to the vernal bloom of irony" = wonderful line...

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I have never experienced Europe, but I hope to someday, and it sounds like trains are the way to go. They expanded the frontier in North America and yet now they're a neglected and underrated mode of travel. In Ontario the service is so unreliable I wouldn't dare use trains except for casual touring. But they alter one's perception of the landscape, and for that I appreciate them.

[missprune.livejournal.com]

"Excellent choice on his part," says my son, the Wilde aficionado, when I remark to him that Van is reading Dorian Gray. I enjoyed your description of the landscape and the feeling of the train ride. I think Oscar is influencing your style today!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Your son! I remember admiring his poetry. How is he doing?

I finished the book this afternoon and found it somewhat perplexing. I'm surprised that Oscar seemed to consider sensuality such a moral quagmire, but perhaps I don't understand the story well enough. It was not Dorian's pursuit of pleasure that tainted him, but the way he treated people, and yet the two are inextricably connected.

[writer00.livejournal.com]

Have I told you lately that you are a beautiful writer?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

If you haven't, I thank you now. :-)