On the train to Monterosso (of the Cinque Terre).
The train station must have been built in the twenties—it is beautiful and classy perfectly crowded. The trains depart from half of a green glass circle, a long line of tracks leaves towards the half-circle of sky at the far end. Some of the cities we pass have tall buildings painted in San Francisco colors, warm and bright. Right out of Milano Centrale there are again the patchworked pieces of land, marked off against each other by trees or high grasses. Sometimes a path cuts between them, something defined but often just a footpath—worn down onto the white soil by Italian (!) feet.
It worries me, this inab
ility to think about what I am seeing. What seems most natural so far is this train ride, the being of nowhere except for near sleep; the lack of responsibilities except for to wait, my favorite responsibility; the dream-ness of it especially, I guess, since that is the only way I know how to think of train stations and train rides and these cities with my favorite kind of buildings puzzled shoulder-to-shoulder on the sides and cracks of mountainous hills that roll into one another.
Now we are in Vernazza.
The train station must have been built in the twenties—it is beautiful and classy perfectly crowded. The trains depart from half of a green glass circle, a long line of tracks leaves towards the half-circle of sky at the far end. Some of the cities we pass have tall buildings painted in San Francisco colors, warm and bright. Right out of Milano Centrale there are again the patchworked pieces of land, marked off against each other by trees or high grasses. Sometimes a path cuts between them, something defined but often just a footpath—worn down onto the white soil by Italian (!) feet.
It worries me, this inab
ility to think about what I am seeing. What seems most natural so far is this train ride, the being of nowhere except for near sleep; the lack of responsibilities except for to wait, my favorite responsibility; the dream-ness of it especially, I guess, since that is the only way I know how to think of train stations and train rides and these cities with my favorite kind of buildings puzzled shoulder-to-shoulder on the sides and cracks of mountainous hills that roll into one another.Now we are in Vernazza.
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