Love in Passing

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A Train. Outside the world whizzes past, highlighted by the late afternoon sun, or is it later with the sun dipping beneath the horizon and everything dusted in a variety of colours. No it can’t be that time, the exchange between day and night is marked too often by the press of people hurrying home moving from their daylight duties of work to their evening duties of family. Nor can it be the later afternoon as that too often is marked by the incessant noise of chattering school children marked with shrill shouts and cries over a general underlying din. Perhaps it is the early afternoon, when most people are firmly entrenched in their day's activities and only a few are heading home so early with so little of the day passed by, the sun’s heat is still quite intense and winks lazily over those people passing beneath it, a lazy fatigue that settles on the travellers making their thoughts turn unusually, at this hour, to sleep. A sleep that surely must surprise when they are taken by it so close to midday where their customs are unfamiliar to siestas. Whilst this hour might be conducive to the following exchange it is only a rare occurrence at such times, as this exchange requires such an odd removal from the normal banalities of the way we function that it would make it rarer. Instead the clock must be wound to the other side, those early hours of the morning when we become so removed from our ordinary functions that anything becomes possible. Yes this must be the hour that I meant. The exchange is a simple one yet nonetheless complex. It is an exchange between a boy and a girl, a connection that is formed between the two. There is nothing overly remarkable about such a situation, indeed it is commonplace for a boy to meet a girl or a girl to meet a boy and the two form some connection that we commonly call love. Yet in its manner it is perhaps remarkable, this boy’s friend will say as much afterwards…

Don’t be stupid, people don’t fall in love on trains, for starters the journey is far too short, half an hour, perhaps an hour is we consider this generously. One hour of your whole entire life is not sufficient a length of time to make such monumental decisions. You don’t throw away the girl you’ve loved for several years on some chance meeting in a train. Who even talks to people on trains? Trains are characterised by the fact that people don’t speak to each other, at least not to people they don’t know, you may get friends talking, or colleagues discussing their day at work, but you don’t just strike up a conversation with the person next to you, its intrusive, people need their private space when in such a confined inescapable public place as a train. And even if you were so struck by the sight of this girl that you did decide to talk to her, what would you say and what would she say back that could be so remarkable as to think yourself in love. And say you did talk to her, I doubt you'd pluck up the courage to go against the unspoken rules of not interfering, that by the time you felt you surely must talk to her or regret it always, you would only be left with about ten minutes of journey time in which to talk to her, and ten minutes is certainly too little time to start talking of love…

What was said is not important, it is not remembered, they both might rack their brains to recall the conversation and draw merely blanks. What they both remember was just a feeling, a notion that this was worth something, that this was something. What exactly it was they are unsure of, it is not precisely love which is a bond forged over shared experiences and passed emotions that ties you closer together. Nor was it necessarily just desire, that thirst for another often mistaken for love. Certainly later there was both, secret kisses snatched when peoples heads are turned, that thirst to know each other more deeply yet never get a chance, the laughter of companionship and the forge they begin to build later on after that initial moment. That initial moment though, that is harder to explain. Not quite either or both it was something else, a moment moving through space, the wheels of the train churning steadily over the metal rails, the world blurring in the motion, the movement forward through life, such encounters are best found on a train, they are encounters which lead somewhere from one point to another…

A train. This time it is late evening, most people have already headed home, but this isn’t some local service any more, its an overnight train, crossing borders to far away places. This time they are side by side, their arms entwined, heads against each other’s shoulders resting. No more stolen kisses, no more frets over others tears, no more causing hurt and being torn apart. All that’s left is each other and the turning onwards of wheels…