On The Train

Deep experience is never peaceful.

Henry James
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Hello Bruce
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Watchman, tell us of the night.
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Weeping may endure for a night
But joy cometh in the morning.

The difficulty with this poem by Mrs. M. M. Weinland is that it doesn't tell how long the night may be. This has been a period of darkness for me, particularly the last 6 months. I look forward to finding that green and grassy meadow where I can rest in the sunshine and drink from the brook of joy. I refuse to accept the idea suggested by Sophocles that one reaches a point in life where joy is no longer a possibility.
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I like trains. I prefer to travel by rail than by any other means. Although I am an excellent driver, rarely had an accident and never a serious one, the highway means other drivers and their irrational ways. And, although air travel is very fast by comparison, a train will never leave you sitting on a runway for 8 hours unable to get off or take off. And, if there's trouble, it won't land on some super highway, in a farmer's corn field or turn back to the wrong airport. And it won't lose your luggage. On a train your back pack is under your feet or in the rack above you.

In News York City, as with many cities, the best way to travel is by rail. The subway, as its name implies, is mostly underground, which means frequent long dark tunnels. But unlike any other form of transportation one can be sure that the train will reach its next destination. It has no choice, the rails ensure that.

When traveling through the tunnel you are unaware of how long it is. If you are lucky enough to be in the first car and can stand looking out the front window you are staring into the long dark tunnel until you finally see faint lights of the next station in the distance that gradually grow brighter and fill all the space. I am looking forward to seeing those lights.

I can also travel to New York City by rail on New Jersey Transit or Amtrak. When approaching the city the train goes underground to traverse the Hudson River thus making for another long dark tunnel. One day while sitting on that train a woman got on with a young girl. The girl spent the entire time staring out the window at the towns, stations, fields and wet lands as we passed them. She didn't say a word until we got to the tunnel under the river, Then after a while she said "When are we gonna come outta this creepy tunnel?"

What wisdom!! I keep asking myself the same question. When am I going to stop rumbling and shaking through my creepy tunnel? When am I going to see the lights up ahead telling me that I am approaching my destination? When am I going to reach the green, grassy meadow and sip the waters of the joy that cometh in the morning?

Joy. I hear it in the music of Bach, in the words of Shakespeare, in the calling of the few birds that live around here. I believe that joy, happiness, goodness exist, they are all already there waiting for us to get through the creepy tunnels of our lives. How long are the tunnels? No man knoweth.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Weird Ways 3/02/09

One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing.

Morris West
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Here we go.
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One of the strangest places I was ever in was a small city in the Southwest that was built literally in the middle of the desert. There was a road that came into town, but it didn't go through it. I walked to the end of the road and I was on the edge of the city, There was a sidewalk. Houses were built along the side walk. It turned a right angle and there were more houses, with back yards, trees. bushes and children playing in the yards But when you stepped off the sidewalk you stepped immediately into the desert. If you turned your back to the houses all you would see in front of you was desert. I don't remember the name of that city or what state it was in, but I imagine it has expanded out into that desert by now.

I often think of that experience of taking a single step from civilization into wilderness. To me it was the same as taking a step from the safe and known into the dark world of ignorance. Ignorance is not a bad thing. Stupidity is bad, ignorance is not the same thing. When able to admit my ignorance about something, I am poised to step into the wild world of darkness and doubt. If I take that step it could be scary. What some people call foolishness, other people call courage. One has to agree to walk in darkness before one can see the light.

If some did not have the courage to peer into a telescope or a microscope, to crawl around in dark caves or on the ocean floor, or peek into the machinations of the human mind, we wouldn't know anything.

I once visited a Museum of Philosophy. In it there was a computer program that asked me a series of questions about my beliefs and opinions. Then it came up with a list of philosophers whose writings, more or less, conformed to my own philosophy of things. I thought, how nice, I can read the works of great writers who agree with me. I could bask in the easy sunshine of coordinate thinking.

It didn't take but a few days before I became bored with that idea, and went searching out the rare and troublesome works of thinkers who were antagonistic to my easy, sunny, back porch studies and who posed ideas that were difficult to understand and even harder to harmonize with what I thought was true. I began to grapple with new ideas. Some of them were very ancient, but they were new to me. And I found dark and doubtful places in my own thinking that needed to have a microscope trained on them.

Oh, I'm still ignorant. Who isn't? But that part of my vagabond journey has been fascinating, fulfilling and infuriating. And I won't stop until I know something.

DB
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May you hear the silent, distant winds of Spring.