Beautiful Blurs of Motion

He was sitting on a train watching the world pass by.

He was thinking on this train, sitting, watching the world pass by.

He found it easier to think when the world was always in motion, when nothing ever stayed the same, when his thoughts were the only constant, and even they shifted at times, and fled when they became too real or too painful. And then he just did, and didn’t think.

The train was empty apart from him. It always was. Or always had been. And he always sat in the same seat, in the last cabin, at the very end in the left corner, and he always rested his head against the cold hard glass and stared, and stared, and watched the world blur like a painting suspended in a constant state of motion.

A state of motion.

Once, not so long ago, the world itself seemed to be in a constant state of motion. His thoughts never made much sense—at least not to anyone but himself. His mind was never quite right. And his heart—his heart he preferred to ignore. Otherwise it hurt. His heart he kept in a vault, perhaps somewhere on the train, where no one would ever find it, since he was the only passenger. He rode alone, and in some ways preferred it that way.

Riding a train is thought to be safer if you ride alone.

But he only preferred riding alone in some ways, and these ways weren’t enough.

Sometimes he would stand from his seat and wander the train cabin by cabin. Every cabin looked exactly the same. Vacant, clean, smelling of nothing.

And then one day it smelled like berries.

The scent surprised him. Sweet and inviting, almost intoxicating. Some cabins were thick with the scent. Others, faint, fleeting, nearly an apparition of his mind. But no—no. The scent was real. The berries were real. It came from somewhere, just as everything comes from somewhere, just as everything happens for a reason.

And so he followed the scent for hours and hours. The train had no end, or if it did, he had never reached the other side. The last cabin was his home, his refuge, but the front—there was no front, no end.

And so he walked.

And eventually he came upon a cabin where he could nearly taste berries in the air, and sitting at the end of that cabin, in the corner seat on his left, a beautiful woman who glanced up as he entered. At first he thought she was looking through him, or past him, at something behind, but then he realized her eyes were very much focused on him.

She smiled, and somehow, although he could not tell how just yet—just yet—he knew this smile wasn’t like her other smiles. There was a difference, and maybe it was slight—but it wasn’t, not to him—but he knew she had two smiles. One for him, and one for the rest of the world. And that touched something, somewhere, very deep within him. Something he had buried. Something that she, with just a smile, began to unearth. And that scared and delighted him.

“I’m doing a puzzle,” she said. “Would you like to help me?”

“I like puzzles,” he said, and approached. “How are you on this train?”

“This train?” she asked, as if there were other trains. “Oh, it’s just one of those things, I think.”

“Those things?”

She nodded and smiled and motioned for him to sit across from her. “Those things that are supposed to happen, those amazingly terrifying things that grip your heart and mind and never let go no matter what happens, those things that everything rests upon, that you balance your life upon, those things you must embrace even if they can break you.”

He nodded, it all somehow making sense. “No one wants to be broken.”

“No, but…”

“But you must let yourself be broken if you ever wish to be whole.”

She beamed and dropped a puzzle piece. “You can read my mind?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, although he didn’t quite understand it, or care to understand it. Knowing was enough. “Is that okay?”

“More than okay. Now, will you help me put this puzzle together? I fear it’s been broken as well. I can’t do it alone. I need you.”

He looked across the table at her, and knew he needed her. “Why are you here? Really?”

“To be with you.”

“And this is real?”

“It can be real, if that’s your wish. But we really must put this puzzle together.”

He nodded and looked down at the puzzle; it was already halfway done. A puzzle of gnomes drinking and drunk from a barrel of rum. And more barrels in the distant skies, carried in the talons of great owls. And the owls were dropping the barrels of rum, and the gnomes were drinking from the barrels, and everything was good and quite strange. But, somehow, everything fit together. Perfectly. And that, he thought, was the very scary, terrifying part. Not just about the puzzle, but everything. It fit together perfectly, and he wasn’t accustomed to such breathtaking moments in life. He had never looked at a picture—even if just half complete for now—or puzzle, and knew that it was perfect. He had never began talking to someone and almost immediately realized he could talk to her forever.

“I’ll help you,” he finally said, after staring at the puzzle and the pieces, and her ringless fingers picking up the pieces and fitting them into the puzzle. “But I’m afraid I’ll put the pieces where they don’t belong.”

“Me too,” she admitted—admitting her fear with the realest smile he had ever seen, that she had ever smiled. “But I trust you.”

And he knew he trusted her as well. More than that. He just met her, but no, that’s not true at all. In some way, in some form, he knew her from the beginning. He didn’t know what beginning, but some beginning, and that’s all that mattered. He knew her, and loved her to the point of lightheadedness, the point where everything else pales in comparison, the point where nothing else matters, the point of real so real it almost feels surreal, and although he hated admitting it to himself, the point beyond explanation. He had always been so adroit at explaining things to himself. Sitting on this train, staring out the window at a muddy world of motion, explaining life to himself with his own fucked-up logic. So adept. Then, this, and explanation finally, and rightfully, and thankfully, failed.

And he couldn’t be happier.