Tuesday, March 18, 2014

I am on the Train.

When reading the first section of "Man on a Train", the illustration of the man watching the scenes he knows so well, yet knows not at all was incredibly familiar to me.  As a person who spent at least 20 hours on the interstate over spring break, I well know this feeling of seeing, yet not seeing.  A friend of mine and I joke that we "Know every exit down the entirety of Interstate 10".  However, when reading this I realized:  I am, essentially, the illustration of the man on the train.  Riding in a car, watching things pass in a blur, acting like I know them when in fact, I don't know them at all.  Even when riding in a car, I am quite often guilty of what Binx in The Moviegoer despises about cars, that one loses one's individuality when in them and is no longer viewed as a person, but as a thing.  I just watch the objects around me through my perspective of them as nothing more than that: objects to be observed, to be known, to be recognized, and then forgotten, for I never actually knew them at all.

"What if the Bomb should not fall?"  This thought too hit home.  Lately, it's been incredibly apparent that our society, especially the Christian society, is very focused towards the end days.  However, what will we do if the Bomb doesn't fall in the next 10 years?  What if the world doesn't end quite yet?  What if we continue running along a path that is blurred from our speed of racing towards the finish, rather than taking the time to stop, get out of the car or train, and understand the things around us?  I don't know what this would look like, or if it's even possible to come fully out of an area of alienation, but it would be interesting to see this done maybe on a small scale, in the little things.

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