A year ago today my Amah passed away and I started thinking. And then I couldn't stop thinking. The quickness with which everything happened (that first phone call, a weekend of hospital visits, the start of chemo and the near immediate downturn all in the span of a month) left me feeling like I'd been running with my breath held and when I finally stopped and gasped for that burst of air supposed to slow my pounding heart, I found instead an abyss come pouring in, a nighttime blackness like a swiftly moving sky studded with a thousand terrors, this unceasing jumble of syllables and panics and reactions. I'd think so much it felt like I couldn't turn my brain off or control what was happening inside of it, lying awake exhausted by a repeating phrase and sleeping only long enough to wake dream-riddled to a new tangle of emotions. There didn't seem to be enough time to figure it all out, or even to figure out what "it" was in the first place. Some people are masters of shutting off their brains, others have curtains they can hide behind. Somewhere in there it occurred to me that if I could just sit quietly, if I could find a place that required almost nothing of me, I might be able to turn it all off for a little while, maybe gain some distance with which to look at things. Or perhaps just watch the world go by without having to take part in it. A year later I'm reminded that today is also my mother's birthday and it was her mother who passed away. We are cycles of birth and life and death and there is no stopping any of it, but you know what? That’s okay. It’s only the same perpetual motion which creates these countless fears, that can soothe them as well. And so, once again I'm reminded of how the mind can begin to unravel---and of the best way I've found to soothe it. It isn't the first time a train ride has saved me and I'm sure it won't be the last.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So take me to the station and put me on the train, I've got not expectations to pass through here again...But if I do, I'll know how to leave. Who would've thought I could find salvation in 11 hours of The Rolling Stones and a train I wasn't laying down in front of?