Those two blasts from the train's horn means that it is close by and we need to flag it down. There used to be a road up here but because it rains so much, buses would frequently slide off of the road. Thus, instead of a rail replacement bus service, we have a permanent bus replacement rail service.
There is only one car of the train and because this place is so barren, we will be the only passengers on board.
I like the smell of clattery diesels. Diesel engines remind me of school trips and the sensation that you are going somewhere (which by the way always exceeds expectations). or perhaps more importantly that the trip that you have just been on has ended and you are going home.
I can think of several occasions where either because of motion sickness, humiliation in one instance, or perhaps due to the unkindness of others, that going home on the bus was the best thing in the world at that moment.
Of course as a commuter who now rides a bus regularly, I really appreciate that someone else is doing the driving for me. Some of the people who drive on Sydney's roads are dead set nutters, who will even pull out and into the braking space of a bus heading downhill at 80km/h. The bus drivers who have to deal with this on a regular basis, are legendary.
However diesel trains are a different matter. Diesel trains are either usually high speed bullets that eat up the miles, or on single tracks that traverse across bleak landscapes. This train trip is of the latter kind.
Going across grey hills where fields, rocks, hills and plains end at cliff faces is always a pleasant experience even if the weather is awful. The contrast of the sea which is unforgiving and hills that have been there longer than memory is wonderful. It makes you remember how small we are in both size as well as in significance. Both the sea and the hills will continue to roll on long after the last person who remembers you has died.
The sea which can not be tamed but which humans can still hurt by throwing our refuse into, cares not for the worries and struggles of people. The hills who have no memory at all, certainly neither care about who was previously there, who is currently there, nor who will occupy the space in the future.
I find great comfort in knowing that because I will be lucky to occupy only about four score and seven years at the most, that the world of 2120 will have no idea that I was ever here.
I might be here for a little while, like a patch of paspalum which has sprung up but eventually the lawnmower of time will come along and I will be like the grass clippings blown about in the wind. Gone; along with every place and everyone I ever knew remembering me not.
Although that sounds incredibly nihilistic, it means that I need to remember that the most unlikely thing that could ever happen has happened in the meantime. I mattered to someone.
History generally remembers the great people who led armies and conquered lands, and in some cases it remembers them in infamy. Some people become like monuments in history, some like the warning signs that warn you of nuclear waste, some people are like the signposts and trailblazers on roads which help the ones that follow find their way but in the end, all of the princes and kings, the clowns that caper and all of the captains of industry, are all just like me. They all become like grass clippings and sawdust, blown about by the winds of history and after they have gone, they matter only as names to the future.
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
History though is not the mere recording of signs and monuments. The princes and kings and clowns and captains don't actually exist without a great host of ordinary people. History might record the speeches of Sir Winston Churchill but he wasn't on the beaches of Normandy and he didn't personally liberate France. History is mostly made up of loads of ordinary people who are like the grass clippings. We all do our very small bit and we are the grass that makes fields, well... fields.
We are on this train at the moment and are passing through a certain point in history at a particular moment in time. I think that most people would describe both time and history as flowing forwards because that's how our perception operates but I suspect that all of history is a thing and that we just happen to be passing through it like this train on the tracks. It has already determined where we should go but we still are responsible for the decisions that we have. I know that I have very much moved into a whole Free Will versus Predeterminism argument but I think that both are completely true; so just deal with it.
This particular train journey ends by going into a tunnel and into the side of a hill. Eventually we will come out in yet another walled city; this time it will be Citta Del Scarletti.
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