CHOO-CHOO ALL THE WAY by Mike Djordjevich (USA)

Listen to this, it is a story, but maybe not. It is about something that was, but it isn’t any more; at least, not in the same way.

In my part of the world, there are no trains. Not in any meaningful way anyway, certainly not in a way that one could write about.

Any time I go anywhere I look for trains. To ride, to look at, to be part of. I am not looking for relics or history or anything like it. I want a simple, reliable method of transportation where there are no lines, security announcements, padding, frisking, freaking out, boarding processes and the similar. In other words, I look for things which don’t resemble airports in any way, shape or manner.

Even the modern, fast, electric bullet trains take me back to the yesteryear; to the time of clickety-clack patter of wheels on tracks of various sizes.

Train travel, even at 200km/h, has that laid back feeling. One gets on, settles in and lets the world around them slow down. Reading is ok, as well as working, meditating or whatever activity seems appropriate. What is important, sought after actually, is the disconnect which is achieved between any passenger’s reality and the one which exists on the outside. The two, in real life, are the same; merged into a symphony of wishes and regrets. But, on trains, we exist almost in a vacuum, as if levitating above some world we don’t understand.

We float on the tracks. The faster we move the more we float and get further detached from the world out there. Why is that? Maybe, because the sights (there are no discernible sounds) whiz by us and we can’t understand and process them. We don’t comprehend.

Is this what it is like to be in space? The silence and the speed.

And then, just as quickly as it started, the sensation ends. We gather our thoughts and start processing the now slow-moving images which get slower rapidly until they are all we can see in the window. We are back, we landed. We have reconnected.

It is a long walk on the platform to the phone calls, e-mails and responsibilities. Really long.

But, as we turn around and leave behind the long, wonder machine, we start looking forward to the next trip.

Or, at the very least, we should.