Silver Streaks
Silver Streaks
Rails and Reality
November 5, 2018
Tunnels
As thousands of cars zoomed past and trains eroded into the night there was a young man on the pedestrian ramp that descends to the CTA "L" Blue Line platform at the Illinois Medical District which bisects the Eisenhower Expressway, sprinting for his life.
He must have been 100 yards up the ramp as the train pulled into the station.
Then 80.
Then 60.
Suddenly 40.
There was no way he was possibly going to make it, running at full throttle to catch that train that was eager to continue its path into the dark and chilly early November evening.
Thirty yards and the train had not left.
Twenty yards and there was hope as the train remained idle.
Then, with a final mad dash as if rounding third and heading for home ahead of the outfielder's throw, he made it, exploding like a missile with a final push just in time as the lighted train closed its doors behind him.
He made it.
Where was he going?
Why was it so important that he catch that train?
Are all trains not the same just living in different times?
In the life of a train, time is everything. The rails, the lights, the seats, the time that trains, more than any other vehicle, must live in allegiance to.
If the plane is late it's because of the weather, if your car is late you should have left earlier, if you walk too slow then you walk too slow. If the boat sinks, you drown.
It's not that the train does not care that you'll be late if you miss the train. It's that the train lives only for the clock. It bleeds for the punctual, the orderly, the social order that only steel rails and clocks can create.
He sprinted, he made it, he won.
The train always wins.
The train leaves everything behind except time as it propels inch over foot over mile over city over a world that it made and which cannot move without it. --TK
Wednesday, November 7, 2018