A Train Ride

      By Dave Karp


        This is a character I'm still developing and decided to write little scene for him tonight.  I hope to expand his story and thoughts and dish out a good world for him sometime in the future!- Dave

          The night was as quiet as a lonely road, with nothing but the echoes of far-away police sirens and whispering wind blowing through the sky. It was a peaceful night, from what I remember. I remember feeling some sort of presence as I stood on the platform. It was the presence of something sudden and final. It glowed in the streetlights and lay still on the train tracks, surrounding me with an uncertain peacefulness. It was in everything as I looked at around me; in every rooftops, every traffic signal, every billboard, every snap of a leaf, and it continued to stay with me even after the headlights of the train came roaring past me and the train car that appeared in front of me let me in with a ding.

I took a seat and watched the people around me. One taller guy was kissing his lover like it was the last day love was alive. A businessman read the headlines of the paper, spilling news both good and bad to his eyes with black, definite ink. He didn’t smile or grin; he just let the world be. A bigger homeless man slept with his mouth open, drool traveling over his chapped lower lip and hung over the seat he was lying in like a icicle off a gutter.

And there I was, coming home from work again after another night working tables and earning my tips to help pay the rent. It wasn’t ideal, no, but it’s was my job. And that was good enough for me to keep plugging through the headaches and sleepless nights in my little bed that laid cold and unwrinkled just for me to mess it up later.

I watched the city fly by me like it was in the wind itself. Light after light, brick after brick, building after building, home after home, street after street, person after person. All I was doing was watching out the window like I was going on safari through the built up beauty of an urban jungle. It kept me at peace, surprisingly. Even through the hustle and bustle of the night life that was alive in some of the areas we passed…I still felt a quiet peace. I felt like I was drifting through clouds.

Then the train went underground and the walls around me became whiter and the windows became mirrors, and there sitting next to me behind the window was a drifter; a loner; a wanderer; both satisfied and lost. He looked just like me.

Occasionally, a fluorescent light passed me by like it was in a hurry. I just watched them out the window, shining on me every few seconds like spotlights. The light warmed me up though. It felt right. It took me through station to station in the darkness of the underground and kept me sane from the darkness I was really in.

That’s when I realized- maybe that’s what God is. I saw God in the subway lights. He was guiding me through some sort of darkness and kept my life going. He was shining again and again, pushing everyone on the train through. Yes, I saw God in the fluorescent lights. And they took me all the way home as the night died behind me.

Is this faith? Is my God a fluorescent light? Do I go through this night after night like a broken record? Am I anywhere? What am I? Is this the dream I had about my city life?

And those are the thoughts that were with me as I laid my head on my old white pillow, shut my eyes, and said farewell to another conscious day.