I am sitting on my 6am train on my way to work. In the darkness beyond the carriage waves are crashing against the rugged Paekakareki shoreline, but they deliver no inspiration, no creative flotsam and jetsam for me to collect and fashion into some manner on this page. The last of the stars twinkling in the predawn sky offer me nothing. Not even the knowledge that many of those stars have long since perished, their light reaching me like an emergency flare light-years too late, stirs no emotion. Those familiar but unknown faces on my carriage lost in their papers, their laptops, their reverie or sleep are usually so generous with their mannerisms, habits, and otherness, but this morning they leave me empty.
....a song from my childhood... “rockin’ rollin’ ridin’ out across the bay / all bound for Morningtown many miles away” Anyone know the song?
It used to always give me a lump in my throat as a child. Such a lonely image the train steaming (in a child’s imagination are trains still run on steam? Surely yes) across a causeway bound for dawn. What made this song seem sad to me? Maybe there are some clues in the rest of the song’s lyrics which i are now lost to me. Maybe it’s the darkness, the way the train cuts through my 6 year old imagination’s bleak landscape – skimming but not a part of the landscape. Cutting through but not off the darkness.
Critically, i think it was because in my mind’s eye i was always alone on that train (the influence of that Farmbake Biscuits TV advertisement?.... Oh how i fantasised about getting that brown paper package wrapped in twine, the way the boy’s arm reached deep into the ripped paper and pulled out a biscuit was a kind of magic. Alone on that train, not knowing what awaited me in Morningtown, not knowing where my parents were.
Oh look at that, I’ve arrived in Wellington. Time to go to work. Sorry you’ll have to wait patiently on this platform for the Ben creative writing train to arrive. No telling when it’ll arrive.
