yesterday i dropped off a video after church. and on my way home, i was the halted by an approaching train at the tracks by the airport.
i don't know if it's a guy thing... a generational thing... or a cultural thing... but trains have been a strange thread thoughout my journey. what kid doesn't like trains... whether the little kind that ran across our bedroom floor growing up... or the massive kind that ran the tracks edging the fields of our farm?
walking along the rails was fascinating when i was a kid. the twin lines that became one in either direction possessed a magical quality that lured me there regularly. but always with a canteen of fear... that quickly overpowered the fantasy whenever i suspected an actual train might be coming through. it's a scary thing to place your head on the steel in hopes of staying way ahead of the monster. and that single light in the distance changed everything faster than my legs could climb the embankment into the safety of the bean field. where and how far away to run was always a curious delimma... like ants that scurry in confusion when their rock safety has been disturbed.
ocassionally as i drive across the plains on my way toward "middle-of-no-where" illinois, i'll glimpse a long snake of a freight train heading someplace... but most of the trains i wait for today are the passenger kind. 'amtrak' making its run between chicago and detroit or beyond. and that's what it was yesterday. i don't think any passenger trains ever went along the nickel-plate line when i was a kid.
yesterday's 3-car passenger version got me thinking about something i'd never mentally fussed over much before. that being... the two opposing heads of the monster. passenger trains don't have cabooses. they have two engines, one at each end. but it's not completely accurate to say they have two heads. yet they do. and i guess it would be just as accurate to say they have two tails, even though they don't.
the reality that in order for the train to move at all... one engine has to assume the tail position in order for there to be movement... is an interesting image. the complimentary reality... that in short order that same tail will become the head and the previous head must exchange headship for tailship... is equally fascinating.
were this symbiotic relationship not to exist, the train could not move... even though it might expend huge amounts of energy. and in order for things to work efficiently... complete surrender is required by one. and yet... were one engine to be granted official and eternal headship, the train could only go so far before it would come to the end of the line... or some roundhouse for re-positioning.
in order for the multi-ton siamese twins to work efficiently... they must both equally and totally lead and submit.
even though we're talking about machines here... it's a worthy image for reflection.
did you just make that headship-for-tailship stuff up? because . . . that's awesome. i am stealing it sometime. don't worry, i will give you credit. or, at least say a wise old man once told me . . .
Posted by: JVo | February 26, 2008 at 04:42 PM