blog 004: thoughts on trains

[marycuntrarian]

There is always a train, there is always a train and I am always on it, I am always on it. It is always moving forward and I am always riding it forward until it won't go anymore. I'm not driving the train but there is always a train that I am always on going forward without trying, going forward on a train that has no destination. There is always a train and I am the only one on it.

I used to live near enough a train station to actually ride it every now and then. Now I live in a backwards area that has little to no public transport. I've always found trains fun, I don't have special interest in them but when I'm riding one I feel especially interested in being there.

It seems like the most stable form of transport in that the car is literally on rails. I know very well things can go off the rails but in theory it's not supposed to (it's not supposed to) and that screech of steel on steel lets us all know this carriage is serious and feels older than the idea of travel.

I've been rewatching Neon Genesis Evangelion and before you roll your eyes I can tell you it's one of my most favorite things in the world, so you should feel bad. There are a lot of scenes at the train station or scenes on a train. To me it always represented the characters lack of agency, that no one in the show has any control over their lives nor even understand what they're doing and to what end. There are important moments that happen at train stations, in the show, in real life. I proposed to the love of my life at a train station, I've had panic attacks that felt like the end in trains, in buses, in the back of taxis. Once I got on the wrong bus and it changed the course of my entire life.

I moved across country with my mother when I was ten years old, on a train. My father was on the other side of that train, behind me, and if we had never left...

A lot of shit happens on trains. And cars. A lot. I read Lolita for the first time on a train, on a long trip, and it felt apt. I had been an emotionally abused child that was pulled from this safe place and that to somewhere I didn't know and back again. Never given agency or asked where I wanted to be, where I felt comfortable.

I've been rewatching Evangelion because I'm depressed. Because I feel like I've lost all control of my life and while the world continues to burn around me, I just want to watch something worse. Something beautiful and raw, but worse. It's the same reason I watch horror, to feel comforted by the surreal absurded unreality of it all. But I need hope and hope is television to the sad elder millennial. Hope is media, in small doses, here and there, the good shit that gets into your bloodstream and changes your dna. Or something more scientific sounding.

I think I've lost my train of thought.

(Edit: Recently watched The Matrix Revolutions since I posted this... There is always a fucking train.)

Comments

[f0rrest]

I've been watching Evangelion recently too, when I have the time, and I never really thought about the train thing, but it's a keen observation, I think. I've been replaying Final Fantasy 8 as well, and there are hella trains in that game, and the narrative is very much about agency and duty and all this other crap, so now, from your trains-as-a-symbol-for-lack-of-agency thing, I will be constantly thinking about this each time Squall and team have to ride a train.

[marycuntrarian]

I think the Rebuild movies, from what I can remember, have even more significant train scenes than the original. I'm probably going to rewatch those soon too, have you seen them?

That's dope! I've never played those but I'm glad my little thoughts about trains hit so hard. ;) I think I needed to flesh this idea out a bit more but it was just a spur of the moment thought.

[f0rrest]

Spur-of-the-moment thoughts are often the best thoughts, I've found.

[keplers_angels]

Two years ago when I moved into my house, I was sad that I wouldn't hear the train anymore. I'd lived in the same town for 20 years and could always hear the train whistle once or twice a day from my apartment(s.)

One day I had brought over a car full of junk and had unpacked it all and was taking a break lying on the empty December back porch trying to fathom that I live in a HOUSE now. Just spacing out and listening to the wind.

And then the train whistle sounded to the south of me and I almost cried.

[marycuntrarian]

There are no fucking trains around here really like my parter and I used to take the train in South Florida all the time and now we live here where there is like one weird train station that has the dumbest schedule and isn't actually helpful to get you anywhere.

I miss trains. :( I think I would also cry right now if I heard one.