Allen's Text 900

Well, then, the end of something, a station reached, the ticket is no longer valid. Discards litter all emergences, going from the train that carries us so quickly along the psyche’s rails. The green and red winking signals along the tracks are left in the nearer distance behind, beyond lies only an infinite plain, the unmarked countryside of the future, flat and smooth from this isolate platform. Yet already the lattices are being laid, the engines begin their slow mounting hum, over there a ticket agent, issuing the single billet printed for such travel. The swinging lanterns of the brakemen, orange eyes in the death dance of the present, thrust lines of glow, hook, catch, in their blatant rhythm, the moments fall and die like torn stubs, tossed beneath the roaring impatient wheels of l’Express! Boarding, one takes with him only a suitcase of memories, a small bag of alpaca visions, the dust gathered in the corners of 10.000 days and nights, stretching behind like so many pieces of rail, so many abandoned ties. Soon will come the day crew, the firemen, the torch, and the cinders will blow a grey fragmented storm against the sky. But you will not know or notice, always the future travels faster than the past, it is its business to do so. You will not know riding through the interminable honeycomb of days and hours, moments and years, in the amber coach of dream, for all those miles and hours, those forests of minutes, vast tundras of time are so much magic now, standing in the present, a moment unburdened, having finished whatever the something-now and ready to depart.

©2006-Allen Sutterfield