Well, I know you said "good ones," Max, but
here's one I may or may not have displayed here:
Indifferent Trains
I was reading Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” again
for the last time when I lost the timetable my travel
agent had slipped into the envelope holding my ticket.
Someone said I should ask the conductor to give
me a new one. I said, “Hell, who really cares where
we’re going or when we’ll get there?” The train itself
certainly didn’t care who I was or where I was going.
It just kept up its little mantra: Ticket-taker, ticket-taker,
ticket-taker, ticket-taker, ticket-taker . . . well, you get
my meaning, don’tcha, buddy? If pressed to say so,
I’d say that the passengers in this car are funny,
sensual, and poignant. The guy in front of me goes
so far as to amuse himself by, every ten or fifteen
minutes, plucking a single strand of hair from the back
of the head of the woman in front of him, the one who’s
been sleeping ever since we pulled out of the station
in Detroit. Still, a full bladder will often make my visit
to the lavatory at the rear of the car worthwhile and
rewarding. Wherever we’re going we must be running
along the terminator now–there’s sunshine to the right
and darkness, with looming thunderheads, off to the
left. Excitement is pitched at a level of intensity that seems
more like ecstasy than potty-mouthed travel. The miles
are repetitive, but never really mawkish. The conductor
is terrific in his well-pressed uniform, stopping to pull
out of his watch pocket a lidded, round watch just like the one
my grandfather left to my father and my father passed on
to me–superbly crafted. Tickety-tock, tickety-tock,
tickety-tock. The train, while never for a moment losing
its momentum, integrates us into landscape after landscape.
Around the time that dawn breaks on the prairie, some of my
fellow passengers wake up and begin to converse–you know,
mundane stuff with bits of confusion and banality mixed in.
A mother with two kids cuddled up on the seat next to her
says to one, “Don’t be a chatterbox, chatterbox, chatterbox.”
Across the aisle, two gentlemen in publishing are having
a little talk about how most trade house editors get their MSS
from agents now, and how, with the “whole anthrax thing”
folks are much less inclined to be reading unsolicited work.
I make a note of that, and wait to be called for breakfast.
--Halvard Johnson
Hal
"One would have to have a heart of stone not
to laugh at the death of Little Nell."
--Oscar Wilde
Halvard Johnson
================
[log in to unmask]
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
On Mar 28, 2008, at 5:05 PM, Max Richards wrote:
> Let's hear some more good railway poems.
>
> And please
>
>> Learned to say "I need to have sex with you right now" in French.
>
> can the French phrase be supplied?
>
> Other languages also, Finnish, American...
>
> On 29/3/08 1:02 AM, "Nathan Hondros" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I love that city. Espcially the chocolat chaud. I have one about a
>> different
>> station:
>> Uneasy at Gare du Nord
>>
>>
>> each hour is a fragment of the next; you wait,
>>
>> loosening your accord with the world;
>>
>>
>> its nothing more than the uneasiness of
>>
>> contradiction (for no moment really relates to another)
>>
>>
>> because the woman you watch scrubbing
>>
>> the wall reveals herself with the coarse brush
>>
>>
>> and now you recall her luminous detail (at this
>>
>> later unrelated moment) as you sense the familiar chair,
>>
>>
>> the white rail of the empty page, the cold,
>>
>> and the nearness of freshly brewed coffee.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 10:17 PM, Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]
>> >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Sonnet: On the Way to Gare St. Lazare
>>>
>>> Missed my train and had to wait five minutes for the next one.
>>> Enjoyed a brioche with marmalade at the Irish pub.
>>> Planned a Japanese meal with Mike and the rest of the guys (and
>>> gals).
>>> Fell asleep briefly in a bar so dark one could easily fall asleep
>>> in it.
>>>
>>> Learned to say "I need to have sex with you right now" in French.
>>> Got up late again this morning. Haven't been sleeping well.
>>> Met Georgina and that Corsican guy at the Louvre.
>>> Stayed inside because of the rain. All-day rain. Again.
>>>
>>> Went to check emails. Nothing from home.
>>> Wandered over to the art school to meet my friends.
>>> Had another chocolat chaud. That must be thirty or so now.
>>> Started to catch up on my reading. Again. New book this time.
>>>
>>> Got some food at a lovely restaurant with purple and red chairs.
>>> Sat inside, hopping outside to take photos.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hal
>>>
>>> Halvard Johnson
>>> ================
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
>>> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
>>> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
>>> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
>>>
>
> --
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