#128: The Train Window
Collecting the view
Every weekday I make the same journey: the same bus, the same uphill walk, the same train. Every weekday I look out the train window to the same view as we wait just a couple of minutes outside the station. Most days I take a photo.
It is my moment to collect myself. It is my small intake of breath before I step off the train and face the day. It is a reminder of my place within this busy city, within this world.
About this time last year, I wrote about my skylight and the view it provided me of the street below. It is strange how things work in circles, how I have replaced one object with another: the skylight for the train sitting on the bridge. I suppose it tells me more about myself than the objects, more about my view of the world than my view from the train. It suggests that sometimes I need to see the world from afar, and that I will grasp those moments and any objects that let me do that.
Things have changed though. A year doesn’t pass without leaving its mark. My need to see the world from above may not have altered, but what exactly I am seeing has. Instead of a minor road, I see the River Tyne. I see a busy city. I see bridges: huge architectural structures keeping the city moving.
Things have taken on a bigger scale since I curled up beneath that skylight and looked out onto a lone petrol station. It is even easier to be lost within the warren of platforms, and streets, and shopping centres. It is even easier to forget where you are as you march along one of Newcastle’s many pavements.
My need to see the world from afar is greater too. To see this magnificent moving city I am part of. To see that I am one of the many components that make it a focus point of industry and culture. Every day I catch a train across one of these huge stretching bridges and I become part of this buzzing world.
Collecting photos of this view allows me to remember that this is my everyday experience now. I take this journey in morning sun peering over the water, in mist that lingers on the tracks, in blue skies and on dull days. I have caught this train window on my phone so many times it is as much a part of me as it is the carriage.
