PASSAGE - through time and through nowhere

 7 January 2015, on an old train in the middle of nowhere, for today, 'nowhere' finds itself in the Polish countryside

Oh how tremendously life has changed in the past few weeks. 

I think back fondly: Saturday mornings spent wandering the streets of Chinatown, witnessing night turning into day in clubs encircling the Bay that selfsame evening, gazing down upon the glittering city from a multiplicity of glittering skyscrapers; Sundays in glitzy shopping malls, or out in the sunshine and warmth of that cheerful island. Weekdays spent in camp (really, it wasn't so bad): the brick-red parade square and the gleaming silver flagpoles, the less-than-luxurious bunks and the rusty little gym. The smiles of friends, the less than stellar food - the shared suffering. The warm familiarity of it all, of that life. 

But today I find myself in a carriage on an old, perhaps Soviet train, being whisked through golden fields and snowy forests, as countless little Polish villages, scarred by unendingly harsh winters and a painful history, flash past the grimy windows. I press up to the glass, my breath fogging up the icy pane, watching landscapes of green, gold, and white melt into one another. 

At this moment, the snow drives down hard; sheets of ice slide rapidly down the windowpane. The next, an expanse of gold, dotted with now almost-bare trees, as dogs romp about against a backdrop of grazing horses, while the rare villager rides past on his creaking bicycle, baskets filled to the brim, for winter has arrived and shall remain. All this time, I sit pensively, a witness, as the train whistles sound, piercing the still silence of the landscape. It is something almost out of an old black and white feature. Flocks of frightened birds are sent up into the air as panting cars sit at ramshackle crossings, waiting for their turn to pass. 

I catch a glimpse of a copse of white birches; a split-second later, they're gone. Warsaw is approaching fast. I hide myself warmly in my many layers of wool and cotton. My scarf tenderly hugs my shivering neck. Gemütlichkeit. I step out onto the platform, and so the next adventure begins. 

new year.

10.45 am
31 December, 2014 

a thought, written on an U-Bahn train while passing Hohenzollernplatz

What's the big deal about the New Year, anyway? This insignificant planet completes another tedious revolution around a burning yellow sphere, and we, in our dingy holes underground, atop our structures barely a fraction of the height of the great mountains, in our minuscule dwellings and trifling lives - we flash lights and blare music that we alone hear. We alone. Alcohol, our toxic creation, consumes our self-important being; we dance, we sing, we sleep.

And with the best resolutions which fade one day later, another sunrise begins, another revolution about the same burning ball, on the same tiny planet. And so on. Etc.

Oh, so I guess it would be customary to say it now. Happy New Year, guys.