Fixing stuff, myself included…
Why Blog Derailment?
What exactly was it that made me run upstairs and start blogging on the recent Amtrak derailment on August 29th? I didn’t know anyone traveling by train from Chicago to D.C. on the 29th; I didn’t like the interruption of my soap opera with breaking news. I’m not a news freak, or someone obsessed with tragedy. In hindsight I think it had to do with an unconscious connection between trains traveling and our lives, a little like, “ships in the night”.
Life and trains?
Tracks, the patterns of tracks from an aerial view, connecting cars, coupling and uncoupling, moving from one place to another, all these things remind me of the life I journey through. My life is full of derailments of one kind or another; interrupted, delayed, canceled meetings and arrangements, failed relationships, all contributed to a sense of the unexpected. Maybe it’s more that we don’t expect the unexpected; we don’t live as if anything could happen anytime, as if love could be gone only minutes from now, as if the slightest ripple has meaning.
But, don’t children live that way?
I think they live that way until they “learn” what to expect. I’m not saying I shouldn’t expect anything; I’m saying, we lose something when we forget we really don’t know what’s going to happen when. Life would just be so f—ing intense; maybe it would be too scary, but when it wasn’t being scary, our own amazement would take us to places we can’t even imagine. I love to be amazed and in awe of the fact that I’m alive at all. Why don’t I feel that way all the time? Because I explain things to myself, and quickly move on to something else in my head. Get out of my head.
“Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.”
–Anon.