On the Rails

There were two of them that summer.

I heard about them later, through friends-of-friends.

A couple of kids wanting to get across the bridge and using the tracks rather than the highway.

The things with trains is that they need a long time and a lot of space to stop.

There’s a head of pressure that builds when you have a massive machine moving.

It’s got a set path, a known destination, and a specific time to get there.

The sights it passes are beautiful and there is a comforting heart beat to the sound of each evenly spaced track.

But there is no exploration, no side movement, and, when the way ahead becomes obstructed, no way to stop.

There is a value to certainty, in both life and writing.

But maybe our heads of steam should be tempered with the passing world around us and the awareness of a single moment of disruption.

Of a bridge on a hot, lazy day, concealed by a corner.

The straight view before the corner

---

When I’m not staring down the tracks ahead, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.

 

Advertisement

On Dreams, and their Fulfillment

When I was five, I wanted to be a platypus.

Things went downhill from there.

I’ve had a lot of dreams over the years.

Some fulfilled, some not.

The thing is, life is a forceful partner.

It’s easy enough to get tired, to fall down, to decide, “Well, maybe all I wanted to do was crawl anyways.”

I’ve spent quite a lot of time in my life crawling.

In my case, a nearly-fatal illness knocked my head against reality and I took a long hard look at my life.

I didn’t like what I saw.

When I broke my dreams into their core parts, the platypus was out.

What I really wanted to do was to help people and tell stories.

I started trying to make both of those things a reality.

Today, the first of those stories went up on Amazon (if you like what you’ve seen of the inside of my head and you like fantasy-adventure, the e-book is over here).

The worst part for me, was when I saw it there, I didn’t feel like I’d achieved a huge step on my road to my dreams.

I felt flat.

Then I spent ten minutes with my head between my legs.

This post?

This is me pulling the reality and the dream together.

I like to think that first dream, that first step, isn’t a completion in itself.

What it did was allow me to stop staring at the mud and look up at the sky.

When I raise my face, there are so many dreams, bright and shining, there for me to follow.

I like to think that five year old me is standing here with me and seeing the whole universe of dreams spread before us.

It’s not whether or not we hold the stars in our hands that makes our dreams worthy.

It is whether or not we reach in the first place.

Here I am, still.

Reaching.

The road ahead. I’m ready, finally.