Thoughts on a Train

What follows was, as will soon be obvious, first written on the overnight train from Seoul to Busan. Minor edits have been made for coherence and stylistic preference, but the essence, I would say, remains the same. For example, the conclusion does not bear nearly as much relation to the introduction as I would have liked, but we tamper with these things at our own risk.

At least since Einstein, if not long before him, we have known that time is relative. The physicists, no doubt, have all sorts of elegant mathematical proofs for this, but for me it is never clearer than when I am on a train. Not only does time stretch and collapse in ways beyond my understanding and descriptive capabilites, but it has an almost mystical ability to bridge together the various epochs of my quasi-adult life.

As I write these words I am returning to Busan, shortly after midnight- 12 minutes into a new Monday. That's the literal assessment of my situation. In some indescribably intangible way, however, I am not only in Korea, circa 2007. I am in 19 years old, taking the train to Ste-Foy, Qc, for a summer of Katimavikking. I am 23, on the night train from Paris to Amsterdam. I am staring out the window as the landscapes of Northern Spain, New Brunswick, and Southern Mexico all roll by.

Travel is, almost by definition, transitional, but I have found that trains hold a particular resonance with me. This may be attributed at least in part to the wanderlust stirred in me from a young age with every walk through Toronto's glorious Union Station and the inevitable backpack-clad youths on their way, no doubt, to places exotic.

It may also owe something to my youthful inhalation of the Canadian mythos of the Railroad As Nation-Builder And Uniter of Oceans. This inculcation of romance should not be underestimated, although it should of course be tempered with at least a cursory awareness of the difficulties and injustices involved in the construction of said railroad.

The most pragmatic explanation for my enduring state of train love is that if I am on a train I have escaped the mundane for at least the duration of the ride. I am either happily ensconced in anticipatory thoughts or enveloped in contemplation of sights freshly seen and deeds freshly done. I fall, it would seem, into un état ferroviaire- that particular combination of feeling and reflection endemic to travel by railroad. At any rate, the iron tracks bring me into a state of quiet Zen- until I am awakened in my couchette by the smell of smoke, and our train comes to a stop in the tranquil countryside somewhere outside Toulouse. But that's another story.