I have found another site to “railfan”, to sit in my recliner and watch trains. Virtual Railfan, LLC has a network of cameras on YouTube.

I started watching trains in Ashland, Virginia, near my home. The camera looks down Railroad Avenue. It is a busy site with CSX and Amtrak trains going through town all day. The activity of the town also provides diversion, entertainment, as I watch the day progress.

Recently I moved on to Ft Madison, Iowa on the banks of the Mississippi River, an awesome sight in its own right, without the added feature of trains. Ft. Madison has a swing bridge over the river with a span that pivots open to allow barge traffic on the river to pass through.

La Plata, Missouri is a stop on the BNSF tracks, more or less South of Ft Madison. If one has time to waste and knows the schedule, it is possible to see a train pass through Ft Madison, then La Plata.

This brings me to Galesburg, Illinois. It would be first in a sequrnce: Galesburg, Ft. Madison, La Plata. Right now I am watching a freight pass through Galesburg. I am pretty sure I saw this train cross the river at Ft. Madison. Now it moves through Galesburg.

This is America going about its business. The freight trains haul plywood, bulk chemicals in both solid form or liquid, in tanker cars for that. There are boxcarss, owned by leasing companies, such as GATX. Then, of course, are the cargo containers, that travel the world, carrying the manufactured products of Korea, China, Taiwan, and Malaysia ultimately to a Wal-Mart or Target near you. From time to time I will see a container bearing the Amazon Prime logo. At least I think I do. When a symbol is everywhere, I can get confused.

So the morning progresses. There is a light rain falling in Ft Madison and Galesburg. It is sunny in Ashland, I need to check La Plata, but I suspect you’re not interested.

Later, folks

I think I want to sleep. I need to sleep, I tell myself. I can’t really write, without my heart becoming noticeable in my chest, my eyelids heavy.

I want to sleep, yet when I take the plunge and climb back into bed, I lie there, with my mind still racing. I sit, my mind racing a little less, thinking about J and why I just don’t take her, when I need to take her.

That’s it. I run around putting a fine point on everything. Is she or is she not my wife? Being used sexually is part of the deal. It’s how we keep our sanity, by admitting this urge exists. You think with all that’s been said and written about sex in the last 150 years, we would have figured that out, the two of us, I mean.

Apparently not.

It did not take long for me to start feeling down and negatively toward things. Slightly paranoid, planning my escape from America. I know. It’s completely delusional thinking.

I don’t know. I lay in bed, began to experience some back pain, and the negativity just started to well up from inside of me.

I will sit, see what happens

Such a glorious Sunday it turned out to be. A vacuumed carpet and the waste paper and magazines consigned to recycling, a shower taken, teeth brushed, cheeks and neck shaved. I sit in clean clothes with a plastic tumbler of iced Earl Grey tea on the table to my right.

As a change of scenery I am watching BNSF tracks in Fort Madison, Iowa. The tracks handle a lot of freight. The tracks flank the Mississippi River, then cross the river on a bridge and into Illinois, near Nauvoo, where Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Latter Day Saints met his demise, if memory serves me.

Speaking of memory, I recall the story, learned I know not where, of how Thomas Jonathon Jackson earned his sobriquet.

“There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginian!” Commanded South Carolina’s General Bee at the Battle of First Manassas.

Funny how the tangible can be desttoyed, but the idea, the legend, the memory and the dream live on, undaunted by the tattooed cowards of the night who afflict our city like those other nocturnal denizens, the rats.

Memory conserves so much. Some memories live on in the brain, others in the muscle, some even in the cock, to be recalled in tumescence for time to time.

Anger seems so distant now, as I gaze upon the tracks, park, and river on this idyllic afternoon.

I made the coffee, heated the croissant, spread butter and guava jelly on the croissant. I ate the croissant, drank the coffee as I waited for Northbound #174 to stop in Ashland. It has just arrived, almost thirty minutes late.

I am feeling better, really.

I never thought leaving the United States to flee the Communists would ever be a possibility. And yet,,,.

“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wildetness, For I had wandered from the straight and true. – Dante´Alighieri, The Inferno* Translation Anthony Esolen Modern Library ©2005 Mass Market Edition

Am I caught up in pursuit of vain and futile diversions, under the pretence of searching for Truth? Have I only mastered the dubious craft of self-drception?

This Friday morning I know that the Silver Meteor is running five hours late. It is now 2:30 AM. I could go back to bed, Sleep seven hours, wake up, turn on YouTube to the Railfan channel and see it pass through Ashland, as if that were my only goal of the day.

The Germans have a word for what I feel, Weltschmerz, roughly the pain of the world. It comes with the knowledge that I can never completely mourn my losses. The triumphs can never, will never offset the deaths and divorces. Triumph and loss can never be measured in a balance.

The grieving never ends. I simply stop a while and cry a little less. Their is a mourning never measured by tears, but solely in the burden of the heart.

I want to see life, to hold a newborn in my arms and declare that we humans shall endure. I watch the women, wondering if one of them shares that dream of continuing on, in the nerves, cells, muscles, and blood of new creation, who will be one from us.

How did I get to be old and still be incomplete?