When I was in 4th year hs, I was lured into taking the entrance exam in PUP because they were the only university in the Philippines that offered Railway Engineering. I got accepted but I could not pursue it because I'm a girl and everyone knows what comes with it. So I tried to become a computer programmer, but what a failure! My heart went to seek what I really want.
So then last night, I kept on thinking why I wanted to be a railway engineer, why I am so into trains, why I feel sorry for myself when I see trains leaving and vanishing into the horizon, why railway stations are the most interesting places in the world. And boom, I came upon a series of lines in Night Train To Lisbon that goes like:
"It was like train rides, like the feeling that the banging sound on the rails, a sound of safety and future might never stop."
and,
"When we set foot for the second time on the platform of the foreign railroad station, hear the voices over the loudspeaker, smell the unique odors, we have come not only to the distant place, but also to the distance of our own inside, to a perhaps thoroughly remote corner of our self which, when we are somewhere else, is completely in the dark and invisible. Otherwise, why should we be so excited, so outside ourselves when the conductor calls the name of the places, when we hear the screech of the brakes and are swallowed up in the suddenly appearing shadow of the railroad station? Otherwise, why should it be a magical moment, a moment of silent drama when the train comes to a complete halt with a final jolt? It is because, from the first steps we take on the strange platform, we resume a life we had interrupted and left, when we felt the first jolts of the moving train. What could be more exciting than resuming an interrupted life with all its promises?"
I realized this fascination was all because a train is a wishful escape for me. Everything I believe in (Freedom, Regrets, Escape, Individualism, etc. ) revolves in the very idea of it. In a brief lapse of time, I am free to explore a whole new perspective of the world and of myself. The continued but sojourn desire to seek another place and to leave everything behind comes with the squealing, loud, signaling sound of a moving train.
Needless to say, I couldn't do everything I want because this is not a free world, and how I wish, I could change it.
Anyway, I'm off to listen to First Train Home before I go to school. Reality.
