Off Switch

19. October 2013 · Comments Off · Categories: Vicarious Journeys · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
off switch

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

He sat alone in carriage four

And felt the depths inside his world:

It fell away and left him hung,

Some music making pointless sounds.

 

He saw the train in hidden ways:

In colours, shapes and sorrow dreams.

He saw it as it really was:

A metal box bereft of tales.

 

The other people on the train

All tried their best to look so calm,.

He felt them panic all around:

They looked for something true to hold.

 

He closed his eyes, the music played:

Too much to take, he switched it off.

 

Journal Entry – 21/11/1998

Just closing my eyes and being at least honest to myself about my thoughts.

On the front of a newspaper: another loss of innocence. The person next to me is marking primary school classwork.

Maybe to escape, to break from the inwardness. To find new areas to write into, to run into (or from). This page has ceased to be an environment for ideas, for anyone. And who am I now? A presumed me? An overt me – the one they all know? To find a new voice which – by its very dishonesty gets closer to the truth. Can I write away the tension in my neck? Can I make the world in my image – or find instead a new world. I know I shouldn’t be afraid: all is all and always was.

 

Photography by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poetry by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

Commuters

13. October 2013 · Comments Off · Categories: Vicarious Journeys · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
commuter

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll see her standing in the rain.
The place, the time: they never change.
She hugs her bag in front of her,
Her toes are on the yellow line.

It’s rare to see her raise her head.
On days like this her hair is wet
And darker than its usual brown.
She stares on to the tracks, unmoved.

For years we’ve shared the same routine:
She stands, I wait – anticipate
Her being there, existing there -
A confirmation of our lives,

And how our lives are drifting by.
Her toes are on the yellow line.

 

Journal Entry – 17/11/1998

Where does this fear come from… the fear of travel? Every day a journey, there and back. A movement through space, there and back. But can’t escape myself and neither can anyone else.

 

Photograph by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

Broken

13. October 2013 · Comments Off · Categories: Vicarious Journeys · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Broken

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

He broke his journey on that day.

No reason why, no thought before,

He simply picked his bag and left,

Four stops before the usual place.

 

And still without a question raised

He left the station, walked into

The town whose name he’d always seen

But never thought a real place.

 

He wandered on without a goal,

Just looking at the streets and shops,

And people on their way to work,

And none of it made any sense.

 

He stopped and stared up at the sky.

Same sky, same day: different life.

 

Journal Entry – 19/11/1998

Who is to say what is anachronistic and what “just is because it is”? The is nothing intrinsically odd about how fields are arranged: they “just are”. If one landowner tried to straighten out their field, all hell would – more than likely – break out. People protect what is, no matter how absurd, no matter how bizarre the chance configuration of elements that produced such a ridiculous status quo.

Writing on a journey changes the way that I travel. Rather than sporadic and unfocussed thoughts I fill my time with words I can return to. It imposes a form upon my thoughts, which are by their nature scatter gun. I look up from the book and it is a kind of freedom, as if I am stepping out into some kind of dream. Then I return back to the blue lines of the page, and I am back into reflection and into the strictures of the world of writing: the world of work.

 

Photography by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

Terminus

06. October 2013 · Comments Off · Categories: Vicarious Journeys · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Terminus

Cheryl Garner 2013 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so it seems this all must end

In blue and gold and shattered glass,

In metal coils around the throats

Of mottled lives between the cracks.

 

What route I took I just don’t know,

It seemed so long and hardly changed:

No matter how, the rains will fall,

The storm will come and I will fall.

 

I have no questions left to ask.

Explosions in the sky can pass,

Explosions take my eyes and pass,

Explosions bring this to its end.

 

The summer lost its heart to me,

But I was cold and told it so.

 

Journal Entry (18/11/1998)

Because I was early this evening I am cramped on to an earlier train than usual. Because I was early out of work I will have half an hour waiting in Steeton for a bus. I could have waited inLeedsstation, but I had to run to catch this train. No time for well thought through decisions.

It is hard to hide this as I write. I have very little room for my arms because I am in the middle of a seat supposedly made for three (three children it must have been). This was because I was early, so early I was late.

It is hard to hide this, but important that I do, though why it is I am not exactly sure. I write to be read, after all.

Writing can be secret, can be about secret things, of course, but the act of writing should be. Most definitely. It is a question of time: time for the reading of others.

Control can be incipient, silent, shy. Writing kind of demands that kind of control. It is quiet until it is finished.

 

 

Photograph by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal entry by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

 

Platform

05. October 2013 · Comments Off · Categories: Vicarious Journeys · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
platform

Cheryl Garner (2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here I am in hope again,

Between the layers of sleep and thought,

The shade and space and hidden lights,

Between the shifting lines of doubt.

 

I sit in carriage four of five,

And drift through waking depths of dreams.

I wait for certainties of time

To close my eyes, or shake me out.

 

He sits on platform three and stares

Into an emptiness of clouds.

The train – not his – has mirrored glass:

He sees himself – he’s looking old.

 

I watch that world disintegrate:

What could have been and what was not.

 

Journal Entry (17/11/1998)

Writing does strange things with duration. Helene Cixous’ wish to write in the time of life is eminently manageable, if the time of life is flexible enough a concept to cope with the different durations.

Time isn’t all glimpses of magpies from speeding trains. For example, the magpie took about a second to pass from my vision, but at least ten seconds to write about. I’m still thinking about it, still revisiting it. Is it still in my mind? It was sat on a fence post, next to an orange traffic cone, next to a disused sports’ ground. Writing primacies the aspect, lends credence, not to a nounal world view, but to a “significant detail” world view. In the passing time of duration x, we are conscious through many durations. Writing is a stillness, not in contradiction with, but in compliment to, the rush of other durations.

 

Image by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal entry by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

A Field

05. October 2013 · Comments Off · Categories: Vicarious Journeys · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
field

Cheryl Garner (2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For years this field was lost in rain,

Unseen by moon and morning haze.

Its entropy a fade of green,

A negative beyond all space,

 

Ignored by all but heron’s wings.

It shed its paths as clues and rhymes:

Unnatural golds and hidden ways,

A loss which never formed a sky.

 

Yet here it is: a fragile myth;

A knowledge formed of what might be;

A place between; a knowing spell;

A line connecting distant hopes.

 

For once this world revolves around

This empty field, this broken crown.

 

 

Journal Entry (17/11/1998)

The forty minutes daylight I have time for.

Today it is below freezing. The sheep next to the platform were very still. Some standing, some lying down. They were widely scattered today (sometimes they bunch up). You’d have thought they would have huddled together today, it being so cold. But they are sheep.

For me in this frame of mind, writing and train travel have an affinity. The train is a stillness before the public dictated rush of my days’ work. Writing makes demands of time, slowing thought, concentrating and distending duration.

 

 

Image by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal entry by Gavin Jones (1998)