Local Trains
How to deliver a post when the mail train's not running, or to put it succinctly, I'm out of ideas. Let's have some fun.
Not much has changed since I posted last week. The show at Artists & Writers Gallery has come down and most of the work is back here in my studio, not stored away neatly in bins and flat files, but spread loosely all around, leaned up against tables, stacked in boxes, spread across surfaces. Before I sort through it and get it put back where it belongs which is not a small task, I am in the middle of completely rrepositioning all the work tables to make the process of painting, printing and book work flow more smoothly. At this point, I need things to run like the Deutsche Bahn, smoothly and on time.
Remember the model train sets that were a feature under the Christmas tree? Real smoke came out of the stacks of the Lionel engines as they ran around and around a figure 8 track. Or maybe someone in your family had boxes and boxes of engines and cars and tracks but no place to set them up. We were that family, and we also had Local Train, a game for ages 5 and up. The object of this game was to put together a complete train, at least one engine, one car and one station master. Though the box calls it dominoes, it’s played by drawing and discarding cards, not tiles. I loved the designs. The station masters in their spiffy uniforms, the European signage (Köln/Paris on the German version), the colors and shapes of the cars all made for a visually delightful game no matter how many times we played it.
And just as last week when my brain was on fire with too much to do, so it is today. I cannot come up with a coherent post for you. My salvation this morning was to run across a journal entry from last month, October 6 to be precise. I was in much the same place then, so here is the story verbatim:
—My Life on a Ping-Pong Table—
A caprice in six partsImagine a model train set with all the tracks laid out on a ping-pong table, and each train in the layout carrying its cargo on its dedicated rounds. I live here, and depend on the trains to get me where I need to go. The yoga train goes in one direction only, round and round the perimeter of the table top. It makes an oval out of a rectangle, and keeps the stations and villages and landscape features from falling off the edges.
Within the oval’s circumference, there’s a garden train that winds and meanders all over mountains' loops and meadows' bends, through tunnels, over bridges and close by the villages. It too goes in one direction only, and its speed varies according to the seasons. It repeats the same route year after year, sometimes stopping to pick up or set off cargo, to clear snow from the tracks in winter, deliver seeds in spring and harvests in fall.
There’s a short train, just three cars and a caboose, that tacks back and forth between the houses of the main village. It makes unscheduled flag stops wherever a family needs work done.
The history train runs through the next village over, stopping at the library that houses the archives of the founding families, or bringing tourists to the spiritual center of the community, which is not a church but a very large boulder with seating all around and tables for working magick spells. In this village live all the creative types. The history train has no fixed schedule and its tracks run both above and below the table's surface.
If you live here with me on this ping-pong table, you know which train to board when, where it will take you and what you are meant to do once you arrive. There is no time-keeper, no station master, no central control office. The sun and moon rise and set, the seasons pass, your life is lived according to those rhythms. Your list of the things you must accomplish is only good for the short term, one day, one week, no longer. Festivals of observance are celebrated on the Quarter and Cross Quarter Days, ensuring that no one is overloaded with commitments and long-range plans.
There is one more train, a locomotive, that travels deep underground below the table. It runs non-stop to provide the energy for all the other trains that go back and forth above it, making sure they move and rest as needed. The name of this locomotive is a secret, and its power is Love.
FOUR BITS
“Lionel was the only company to develop and market a solid smoke pellet. All but the pellets produced in 1946 were made from a secret waxy compound called meta-terphenyl.” You put a pellet in the stack and real smoke issued forth. Imagine that! I can’t share with you the mysterious smell of the smoke that came from the jet black Lionel engine’s smokestack back in the day or the sound of the lonesome whistle. But I can share this amazing set-up, a legendary layout from EnterTRAINment Junction in Cincinnati, O Hi O.
2. From “Entertainment Junction: Remembering a legendary layout,” “Opened in August 2008, EnterTRAINment Junction was the vision of successful Cincinnati businessman Don Oeters, a model train enthusiast since childhood. After 34 years in business, Don sold his company to follow his dream of opening a massive, climate-controlled display. In the Cincinnati northern suburb of West Chester, he purchased an 80,000-square-foot building and immediately went to work on his passionate pursuit.” More at “Entertainment Junction: Remembering a legendary layout”
With special thanks to my daughter who remembered the name of the game (Local Train) and found a slightly worn edition on EBay.
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I’d love to hear your stories about trains, or the cool ways you cope with overload in the studio. Leave a comment here, or send me an email.
I haven’t featured Tarot in a post for a while now, but I am doing readings. If you’d like to schedule one, let me know and we’ll set up a time.
I love the trains. How we come into and depart from the station is much like our ideas and creative notions. Sometimes, they are delayed.
Your post conjured up the Golden Book, ‘Tootle’ the little guy ‘training’ to be the big guy with lots of bumps along the way