It’s been a while since I’ve written to you hasn’t it?
Time has passed, as is inevitable. I don’t really know what
struck me that I should write again. Maybe it was somewhere in the low rolling
fog over the high mountaintops through which I ride. Past tea plantations, rice
fields, scheeols with children at play, while a light slanted rain plays across
the dense forestry.
Sri Lanka.
Really, I’m being paid to write now. I hate it in a way. For
so long at the onset of these little games I’d play on paper with words mixed
and jumbled as I pleased to make sense of things that didn’t – I never believed
anyone would even mildly care. Certainly not relate, but that’s probably
egotistical.
The same with travel. How foolish of me to take the two
things that gave me the most solace and sense of personal adventure and
commodify them in my personal economy.
Not that “The World’s 5th Most Awe Inspiring
Train Ride” isn’t a thrill and all but, something in the lure of it has lost
it’s charm. Further, faster, and better equipped with less gut churning anxiety
as to who I’ll be when I get there and what I’ll think of things I’ve seen once
I’ve left.
That was a pretty epic waterfall maybe a meter away from my
open window just now though, caught a bit of the spray.
A mother and her young daughter, sit across from me. The
father lifted them through the window from the platform onto the crowded train.
He waves to the daughter, and gives his wife a slight shake of the head, a wobble
really with an unwavering, stoic gaze. In moments both began to sleep, their
bags piled around them. Perhaps they will visit relatives, or the Father will
be busy at work. I think they both will miss him.
The mountain people of Sri Lanka seem slightly different
than their compatriates along the coast.
Their jaws are set more firmly. Their
faces, movements, the hair on the mans arms just near me now – they know the
cold unlike the lowlying coast. That which had been a mist moments ago has
turned into a heavy dense fog, and the view from my window shrinks around me in
a thick shroud, light, but impenetrable.
I’ve grown less careless. Not entirely mind you, but some.
Now I think, oh she loves me and so I should do something
about this or I shouldn’t do this because she does loves me. Before it would
have been rare to set some other persons feelings before mine.
I saw someone ask recently, “What do you know of love?”
I declined to answer though because I do not think it would
have been a popular or appropriate answer for that particular audience. It is
sacrifice – that defines true, undying love.
In that sense I will either know the greatest of loves, or
never at all.
The train is continuing for a few more hours now. I think
sooner or later though, I should stop.
