I wish I had the time and focus to write about the sleeper car--not too much actually happened, but the warp and woof of that nothingness is really interesting to me.

At one point, I felt that I was travelling in a thundercloud over the countryside--that the rattle of the wheels sounded like heavy rain. And at some point I felt that the train was a morsel of food, being passed through intestine-like tunnels; the dripping and shifting of our water tank seemed to envelop the room, and I felt us gurgling down the track, just a bit of barely digested food being passed through the vast stomach of Europe. It was an oddly archetypal journey.

[…]

Closing my eyes now. there's no way I'm going to get to 1700 words with my eyes open. I've turned off my music because the room’s stereo is overwhelming, pouring out of the speakers and blasting into this empty room ad the empty room upstairs, the empty room where all the people are, where the empty people flicker in the hall like the skipping CD player which jumps its way through the song, just like me, skipping my way through this song, leaping from the chorus to the next verse, returning to the bridge but moving through it too fast, the fingers keeping a steady beat but the rest of me moving about the frets and staggering about on the stage and waiting for the disdain of the audience that will ever come because the room is empty, empty, empty.

And there's a neon blue other glowing out on the horizon of Paris, there's an actual mother, blue with cold in the waters off Avignon, and I wish that I could choose the abstract sometimes as my actual mother. If only I myself had been the chimera, the bastard offspring of an abstract symbol and a disciplined way of looking at the world, the radiant blue neon that gave birth to the night, the solid way of seeing that birthed the day. Osiris and his wife, the day and the night. The cow headed goddess and the unhappy woman in the riding ring. I have my heritage and I have not claimed it, but it does not matter. It has claimed me. Child of sorrow writing alone in the basement in Paris. And this is my imperative, the only mission statement which I have been given: Destroy all monsters, destroy all monsters, destroy all monsters.

[…]

Previous: October 26, 2001--Barcelona, Spain

Next: October 28, 2001--Paris, France

Email me.

All material on these pages is ©2001 by Jeff Lester. With the exception of non-profit distribution, all other rights are reserved.