Carriages of Steam and Steel, a personal essay

Carriages of Steam and Steel

 The bus ride from my school campus to the train station actually took me further away from home, and then I had to backtrack on the Northstar line. Every once in a while I did not make the 4:11 departure, and sat cross legged on the cement, leaning against one of the small gazebos that protected either a stair case, an elevator that people who were definitely not in a wheelchair or walking with a cane persist on using, or a ticket machine that liked to take its sweet time in receiving input from the key pad.

I sat there waiting for the next train. I sat there and I either wasted data that my stepfather paid for, watching YouTube videos of young adults being ironic about ironic humor about being ironic, or listening to music that sounded like someone recorded two sentient toasters mid-coitus, or maybe some classic rock.

 With the onset of spring however, and the ability to wear only two layers of clothing without becoming stiffer than a Navy captain in a strait jacket, a warm wind threaded its way along the tracks on a weekday as I allowed Guns and Roses to elaborate upon me the subject of a location with pretty girls and green grass. The two pieces of malleable rubber popped out of my ears, and were met with an overwhelming, unreal, almost inconceivable, something.

 Imagine an office building with a bunch of white-collar workers constantly buzzed on caffeine and possibly a little Adderall. Not just the underdog grunts, everyone up the corporate ladder is going a hundred-and-ten-percent twenty-four-seven. That was and still my sensory reception on a lazy Sunday afternoon. This, however, was utterly lacking in any response from my hearing, skin, tongue; even my eyes seemed strangely undisturbed by the surrounding input. Everything was simply, inexplicably, there. Just there. The most thereness that ever were there. Everything around me existed, had weight to it, gravity to it. Every tiny little pebble and every scrawny tree pulled me in all directions. Everything tugged at me with its presence in the world and I had never felt more part of reality than I had before.

Usually, five pages worth of notes on a slideshow could fly by before I suddenly jerked in my own seat, so a moment of clarity like this was my own trumpeter swan. I would look around, at all the faces, some facing at the professor, some down in their own desks. I would be a member of the former group, my eyes wide open and tracking the movements of the man or woman up at the front lecturing. I would not hear a single word, only what I wanted to hear. I would not see a single picture, a single word, only the thin veil I put over my eyes. Like an old school projector I would create a scene and play it against the back of my lenses, some farfetched concept brought unto my senses. Sometimes I could even feel, smell, taste what I wanted to, not what was there. It was like one of those new VR headsets, complete with a set of headphones to completely close off the outside, only your fingers on the keyboard and mouse keeping you grounded. Like a ski-mask with no holes for eyes, knitted out of black wool being tugged over my forehead, nose, lips and chin. Like burying your face into a cool pillow at midnight, or when you wake up too early on a day off, letting your mind wander into sleep. So much goes right past you, but you are enthralled with what you have presented before yourself. With the illusion being of my own creation, I also was not as limited as any of the examples just given. I could make up whatever rules or laws of physic I wanted, I could warp reality to my will. For the sake of a good story or making myself feel more like a true badass, I could sacrifice all logic. This was a “skill” I had decided a long time ago was worth focusing on.

I could only see what was in front of me. Steel tracks nailed to solid wooden boards, each one buried partway in a bed of small rocks. Tiny balls of unprocessed iron, gone to waste as they sat idly on both the walkway and the ground below it. The small parking lot across the chain link fence, the wooden fence that lined the backyards of the ill-planned neighborhoods. The trees, grass, and vines that slowly sought to gain a foothold in this new forest of concrete and asphalt. Foreign invaders on their own land.

 Then the roaring came. First it was long and low, barely tickling the hairs on the back of my neck. Then it was great, immersing me in the sounds of a burning iron belly, stuffed with cogs and pistons. A carriage of steam and steel made its way along its line, blue and gold glinted in the bright orange sphere that still hung over the monoliths on the horizon. At this distance I could see a shimmer in the air, the heat from the engine radiated out in front, broken over the nose of the lead car. Three spots of bright white rest on the front, only visible as small spots in the daylight.

 The roar soon manifested itself into the repeating din of iron wheels being forced to rotate, dragging its cargo along. Inside, busy bodies, artists, programmers, engineers, students, blue collar and white collar alike were either coming home from or heading to the daily grind, the nine-to-five or five-to-nine personal hell that you inadvertently signed up for by being born in America. Still, I reminded myself that a sounds-good-on-paper social system that gets taken advantage of every single time despite its noble intentions of equal wealth was around a hundred times worse than a paycheck that was earned by literally being a public maid for Big Lake, even if I got to see the sunrise on a daily basis. I reminded myself that even though I needed to take a train five towns over and one back to get to the campus, and that ninety-percent of my income was sunk straight into tuitions fees, it was still better than Uncle Sam telling me what I could learn.

 Like all highs, it came crashing down, a zeppelin going up in flames. Suddenly everything irritated me, every snort and sniffle and shuffle, the presence of fifty or so others all seeing the thereness that I had managed to isolate myself to suddenly intruding. The moment was gone, lost to memory. As I jammed my rubber earbuds back in, Atlanta Rhythm Section’s “So Into You” meeting my cranium, I would focus my mind to achieve that state again. Unfortunately, like any rare-bird sighting, it was not coming back until it damn well pleased to.

 Now I do not profess to completely understand or to admit that my own interpretation of this moment is the result of perfect personal insight. However I do now see that something is calling to me, something that I have long buried deep. Buried under fantasy, under hundreds of separate lives never truly lived.

 “Where are you Tom?”

 That question had been directed at me one too many times. I was tempted to answer with some nerdy sounding setting and situation. Some alien world, or our own with monsters and magic. Scenes of heroes apart from myself, or throwing my own mind into a new body and name in order to experience action and adventure.

 “I’m listening!” I would lie. A fib I hardly believed myself, turning to my mother, Christina as she gave me that look that made me feel like I was a puppy tucking its tail between its hind legs. Maybe my brothers, Tim and Ty would chuckle. Maybe I was now the center of attention.

 “Tom were you even paying attention?”

 “How much you wanna bet we have to tell him, like, separately after dinner?”

 I would laugh with them.

 Thomas, where are you?

 Not here. Never where I actually was. Never on the train, at the station, at school, at home. Always somewhere else. It seems that, while I had created escape, I had been left behind. This ability to go somewhere else without ever moving a muscle had chained me, and everyone else had left me behind. I sought to forget the world, to drown myself only in what I wanted to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. I sought to smother my mind in pleasure. I succeeded. Now the world was calling back to me, the storm was brewing. While everyone else was building their shelters, I had been picking at the grass.

 My shoe’s sole slapped against the concrete of the Big Lake station, skipping the single step just under the door of the car. Ahead of and behind me bodies shuffled out in a line, which proceeded to spread into multiple branches. At the other door a similar pattern of people made their way onto the train. The voices were muffled behind my earbuds, but the weight of each person still made its way to my skin. I flipped out my phone, the battery at twenty-percent, how it usually was when I got back home. After a series of quick strokes, then several types, I informed my step-brother Jonah that I had arrived. I did not receive a response, so I assumed he was coming to pick me up.

 I trotted over to where a newspaper bin was sat right next to a lamp post, resting my backpack on the top of the green metal box and putting my weight against both objects. My eyes flitted about as the hustle and bustle slowly grew, people going to their cars, people going to other people in cars, at least one husband or wife walking up and kissing each other and holding each other tightly. Every time I used the train, there was at least one instance of this. How many couples became separated, for extended periods of time, so often?

 Then the parking lot became still again. No engines, no conversation. No honking, not even the faint cries of the iron beast met my ears, having returned to its brick and mortar nest for the night. A long time passed, and I went through at least five songs, most three or four minutes long.

Soon enough I could hear and feel only one thing, even through my music. The air rushing past me, making everything shift back and forth. My head turned back down the tracks, towards Elk River, Anoka, Ramsey, Coon Rapids, Fridley and the Twin Cities. The wind threaded its way up my coat, along my cheeks, my eyes watering as the moisture was carried off. I yanked at my collar, tightening it around my neck, chin and ears, helping my Elmer-Fudd cap cover my whole head.