Choo-choo!

Do u remember those train sets we used to play with when we were younger? The big black steam train engine and all the little carriages in tow. And the black tracks that only came in straight and curved pieces which we then had to put together. I wonder if kids still play with that now? Maybe not. I guess everything is now motorized, computerized and radio-ized. They've probably never seen a steam engine, real or otherwise (save the good ole Hogwarts Express, of course). And tracks, I suppose, no longer exist. I feel quite old thinking about the way kids today play in the virtual world whereas I used to roll around in the good earth in playgrounds. But my approaching senility is a topic for another blog.

Back to the toy trains. Actually I never had any trains myself, unfortunately. I played with my younger brother's. I guess nobody thought a girl might like to play with toy trains. How very sexist of them! Hmmph!
Anyway, the reason for this apparently random blog is that I saw a picture of one of those train sets while leafing through an old photo album which triggered all these fond memories. Also, I realised how little details in the past become more significant later on. Or at the very least, I was able to find a way to make them more significant, all of which will be made clear in time.

One thing I remember quite vividly is that my brother would leave his tracks open-ended and let the trains topple over one another when they reached the end of the track and then cackle madly at the sight. Mad! But my train tracks were always very neat and symmetrical. They made one smooth curve around the room, or there was a perfectly alligned figure eight in the middle. I guess if my brother's designs were an indication of his lunacy, then mine were probably of my anal-retentiveness. Or obsessive compulsive disorder.

Train tracks. Aren't we all on our separate set of tracks? Haven't we built ourselves a one way track to the respective destinations of our desire? Whether it is a high-flying job in the city, or the picture-perfect family, or a retirement in Hawaii. The only difference is whether these tracks- the straight and the curved- were pieced together by our own two hands or if they were the work of someone else. And if we don't like the direction in which our train is headed, can we snap off the piece in front of us and put in another one, moulding and adjusting till we arrive at that perfect curve that will veer the train in another direction?

My complete lack of imagination - or perhaps a lack of a sense of adventure - as a child meant that I usually looked to the diagrams that came with the train sets when I built my designs. My train tracks were symmetrically crafted to imitate the ones in the picture, around which the laughing boy played with his equally cheerful father. (Sexism again!)
So, to over-analyse into this, as we're so often prone to do in English Literature, have I now allowed someone else's picture of idealism to rule my own impression of it?

To deviate from the topic yet again, I have been self-diagnosed with a not terminal yet potentially life-threatening disease - Hidden Meaning Syndrome (HMS). It is a disease not discovered till very recently, by yours truly, and one that plagues Literature students in particular. I say life-threatening because by the end of the course you will either be beaten to death by your friends or be banging your own head against a wall.

Now what was I saying? *rereads post* Ah, yes! For now I feel myself careening down this track that I have built for myself. Yes, I concede it has been my own doing, or at least my consenting that has brought me here. I do not blame anyone else for the course my life will run. Yet, neither do I feel any resposibility or sense of pride in the turns my train takes. The pieces of the track that are now lined before me seem only to have been chosen out of default. And they lead one way only, barrelling past so many turn-offs and detours I will never come across again.

Perhaps that is why I want so much to learn so many things. So I never miss any of those captivating turns that hold endless unbridled wonder, hope and possibility. And why I decided on my law degree eventually, because its versatlility made accessible to me all these options. Only, I have to keep reminding myself of why I decided upon it in the first place. Why? Because it was a compromise - between my stubborn pursuit to quench the unquenchable thirst and my utterly superficial desire to live in comfort.

Yet for all our shaping and careening and veering and trundling, the horizon is always at arm's length, beckoning with one glorious sunset preceding an equally glorious sunrise.

*All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades further and further when I move forward.*

-Lord Alfred Tennyson (Ulysses)