I Paper…

Being light and unseen, transparent. That would have been my superpower of choice when I was a teenager. As a kid I dreamed of teleportation. Back then my granny lived far away. Thirty six hours by train every summer to get there. I would play rock-scissors-paper with my brother to figure out who gets the upper shelf. The trainwoman would serve tea in a tea glass with an iron tea glass holder. In thirty six hours, you adopt a second pulse: that of the giant worm in whose womb you travel. Your body would still pulsate with it when your feet hit the ground at the final station. Your body would smell like train until you washed it. Probably twice. I wanted a teleportation chair with a button to immediately carry me to my granny for a New year’s eve or whenever.

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I grew to love the train. Being a moving line that someone sees from the window of their house in the middle of nowhere. Is it you who moves, leaving all behind? Or is it everything else that keeps moving and you fall out of this movement—a parasite in a warm iron belly. Unseen, observing.

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You only synchronized with the world when the train stopped at some city station. Through the open window they would sell you homemade pastries, stinky smoked fish with their bellies turned inside out, half sour dill pickles in plastic bags, and ice cream. I liked drinking tea from a tea glass with an iron tea glass holder. They don’t use those anymore. Those trains had restrooms that flush down on the rail track. You could see tie bars flashing by through the hole when you pressed and held the flush pedal with your foot. As a kid I would throw messages written on pieces of cardboard cookie boxes and covers from instant mashed potatoes down that hole. Objects that would have become a lead to something. I don’t know who the mysterious addressee was. At this point, I’m starting to think it has to be me, but I never managed to receive the message.