What a joy
What a joy it has been to travel by train, and be disconnected from the internet. Forcefully, I have to just read what is in hand. A little enraging, perhaps, as I have Enshittification, by Cory Doctorow. But a joy whatsoever. I do not care this trip is longer that it would be in a car, because I am not in a hurry and it’s a spacious sitting with so many windows. I do not care about this slowness because it is so efficient and I am not in charge to moving this gigantic building. My neighbors are also nice people and have their own stories wrapped in silence. We are crossing fields that are green and have some hills far back. We went through some wetlands as well and I could see many different kinds of birds. There was one rabbit running away from some black cows that were not really interested in the rabbit’s fears. Perhaps it was running away from the train, but it doesn’t make sense because it was far back, and the train was moving more or less parallel to the racing jumper. There was a fire in a creek, releasing a dense gray cloud uphill. I wish I could plant some oaks on those big extensions of green, though. I learned these are not what they should, they are actually desserts in a non-intuitive sense (another good enraging read, We Are Eating the Earth, by Michael Grunwald). I wonder about how many lives depend on the produce, and I’ve seen some workers picking the soil with a tool, walking along the lines of plants under the sun, with no shade. I do not like the Sun with no shade at sight and water at hand, I imagine they think the same. There’s a lot that is mechanized, but a lot too that needs a human hand to be done. Here humans are treated as appendages of machines, a nightmarish vision learnt from The Mechanic and the Luddite, by Jathan Sadowsky. The Sun is free, at least.
I think cows are funny. At least these cows sprinkling the hills, in the middle of vast extensions of soft-looking green. I do not know what they are thinking, with no trees or water nearby. I’ve seen some play around, making some runs as the rabbit. I’ve seen the smart ones near water and clumped under some shade. I wonder what would happened if they were left alone here. Would they survive? Would they multiply and eat all what is available? Would they evolve and get faster and faster to the point of running along the train and bump against it to derail it? I think this is good moment in their lives, but I predict they will be drafted to places I don’t want to think about. In Spanish, called Mataderos, one of the most awful words I know. Cows are funny, but they subtly remind me of an impending brutal tragedy.
All these systems humans have built relay on the interdependence of a much much older organism, which has shown an incredible resilience on our stupidity. I pray for this resilience to sustain more damage and change, until humans become more like an interdependent nourishing layer rather than a blazing incontrollable fire. I hope we have passed peak destruction and individualism, I really do.
Not having internet allows me to remember this: flying in an overnight plane is a nightmare painted with blue and white dim lights, announced by a scream, with no space for my legs, no rest for my head, arms, and back, and cramped food on a sad tray that I have to pay for, and want to throw out of a window that is deadly to open. By comparison this train is wet dream.