Somehow riding a train feels like fast forwarding through history. The railroad tracks that claw their way from train station to train station, the houses that became our homes pass by in the blink of an eye, gone within nanoseconds. The lives that dwell between those four walls will forever remain a mystery to us. The roads that have carved themselves into the earth act as lifelines, a means by which we can calculate the immense speed at which we pass all of it by. So many beauty goes unseen. So many people go by unknown. Is all of this fast-travel really improving our lives or does it keep us from actually living it? Will getting us faster from A to B ensure that our arrival will be more pleasant, or will it cause us to miss out on so much more? Are all of these improvements for the better or are they what keep us ignorant and scared of interaction? Why are we so disconnected?
Race for yesterday
I often wonder what would happen if one should perpetually cross the date line and therefore never go forward? Always going back to yesterday, never quite to tomorrow. Would it enable that person to erase some of their mistakes? Or will they inevitably make them again? Going back to do it all over again could become quite an addiction I can imagine. After all, our inner neurotic wants nothing if not perfection and absolution. A chance to set things right. But where do we draw the line? Where do we stop editing things and embrace the consequences or even the mistakes that follow? If you could go back to yesterday, would you do it? Or would you come to terms with the past and face tomorrow head on?
Hallmark versus reality
How do you know if you love someone? How do you know they’re the one? And even if, supposedly, you do know for sure, how do we tell them? The words I and Love and You have become so mundane and meaningless it’s hard to figure out when these words are heartfelt or when they are just a poor excuse for a Hallmark card. What is love? There are many types of love: the supreme, cannot live without one another, Shakespearian love which eventually leads to the mutual destruction of the loving parties, an all-consuming love, there’s also the love of friendship, a sensation between friends that transcends them from the plain of amitié and lifts them up higher onto something else, a type of love, but without actually being love. And these two are just the tip of the iceberg, there are thousands of love connections throughout the world. Some we know, some we practice, some we condemn and others we refuse to accept. Some people say love is what makes the world go round, but I always thought gravity and cosmic determination took care of that? So what is people’s obsession with love – or sometimes the lack there of? Is love really what makes it all worthwhile? Millions of people break up and still manage to live happily ever after. People get divorced, become widowers or simply choose to throw their hands up and walk away. Yet they all survive – most of them anyway. So I would hardly say love is what makes the world go round, surely it’s just a pleasant pass-time, is it not? Why do we need love? We’ve got friends, best friends, pets, parents, fuckbuddies, one night stands, prostitutes, chocolate and so many other substitutes for love, so what’s with that four-letter word? Chocolate is a nine-letter word, but I guess less is more, right? Good things come in small packages? So tell me then, why the mansion? Why the Ferrari in the garage? Why the big-ass flat screen TVs? I think it’s time to face facts: love is just a word, concocted by the people who felt the need to define their relationship with another word than just friend. Because nowadays, love can be found anywhere and in a multitude of forms, so the notion of one love per person seems hardly worth it. The greatest love songs are often break-up songs. It is a known fact that broken hearts tend to woo more people than someone who’s gotten his heart’s desire. It’s always easier to start over than to try and fix something that’s broken. Why else do we keep upgrading our cell phones, replacing our old - yet still functioning - computers and buying new clothes because the old ones are torn? Ancient man might have been so cheap as to desperately try to fix each loose hem, but that doesn’t mean we all have to suffer. And what if you can’t sow worth a damn? Are you doomed to live with a flaw, plain out there for all to see? Wouldn’t it be easier to just go out and buy yourself something new? Maybe the same goes for love. Don’t try to fix it if it’s broken, get out there and go find something else! Perhaps it’ll be better than the one you had before, or perhaps not, but that’s why you need to hold on to your receipt, so you can exchange it if you’re not happy thirty days to forty years of marriage after purchase.
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