Having crossed the tracks

by Hap

Having crossed the tracks

Having crossed the tracks

A stallion stands motionless on a crumbling patch of pavement where the cobblestones give way to age-browned steel. The freight train passes mere inches from his muzzle, blurring the line between noise and violence. Colorful graffiti passes by in a rainbow blur, flashes of color with no real rhythm but enough cadence that the eye searches in vain for a pattern.

No, there is a rhythm, but not where he’s looking. He changes his focus. In between flashes of rust and rebellion, he can see the road that led to here. Green trees and sweet grass beckon from the irrevocable past, still bathed in the sunlight he can’t remember walking through. It seems wrong, somehow, to remember the fluffy clouds and candy colored days.

Grease and burned diesel replace the steam and frosting he remembered. There used to be cake, or the promise of one. Promise of many? Hm. Wrapped presents gathering dust take their place as his gaze wanders closer to the crossing. The taffy cars, painted flowers, and cheerful mustachioed conductor had long disappeared into the smoke of distant engines, like the one pulling this interminable chain of filthy noise. Each passing car drags a pocket of emptiness behind it. Each of these vacuums sucks the breath out of his nostrils, exchanging it for the grimy dust of a thousand forgotten cargoes.

The sun punches at the clouds. It’s like neither one cares enough to win, and the result is a stalemate that pries at his eyelids, coming at him from every direction. There’s no such thing as shade, and no such thing as warmth. He squints, and wants to sleep. Just to lie down, and forget the noise. The noise and the smell. The noise tears at him, shaking his frame and pulling color out of the hair that falls around his ears.

A railroad crossing is just that. It’s where rails cross the road. It cuts in two, divides. Separates.

He looks down at the road beneath his hooves. His ears perk up as he focuses on the cobblestones. The train takes a small chunk of his ear; just one more piece like all the others before. He imagines that it made a fleshy slap of a noise, though he didn’t hear it. He could barely even feel it.

The train moves on, of course. Nothing he could do would ever slow it down. No piece of him is big enough to change its momentum.

From the corner of his eye the stallion sees another pony, just as she turns away. He turns around and sees dozens of ponies passing through and occupying space. Some look through him, others look around him. A scruffy gray pony in blue scrubs is talking, but the stallion instantly regrets trying to listen – it only lets the noise of the train into his head even more. His teeth rattle in their sockets, his brain pounds insistently to be let out, and his eyes burn.

Some ponies are too nice, and some are too professional. None attempt to shout. A mare in a business suit reaches out and takes away the book he didn’t realize he had been holding. It wasn’t important. If it wasn’t important, then he could have thrown it in front of the train. Of course, it wouldn’t have helped. He could have tried anyway.

So many ponies are laughing, or fussing with their hair, or talking about things that never mattered, or doing a hundred million useless things that nobody ever cared about and never needed doing. And none of them care that nobody cares about what they do. He hates everything they do, and he hates that he cares enough to hate.

The stallion stands up. Again. Tries to pound the noise out of his head. Again. One thunder can’t cover another, and blindness doesn’t stop the noise. Nor lameness nor sharpness nor burning nor sinking nor laughing nor caring nor fussing nor—

The world shakes and groans, grinds his joints to powder. And still he stands. Isn’t that what stallions do? They stand. Strong. Resolute. He falls.

A mare tumbles with him. For a time, they lie together, shaking and burning in the cold roar of sparking wheels and polished rails. She talks, and he can’t hear. She talks at length, and he opens his ears to the world – one on the earth, one to the sky, bleeding.

He wonders how long he has been talking. He asks about the train. He asks about the noise. She replies. Maybe.

Pebbles dance in the cracks between cobblestones. If he stares at the wheels, it almost feels like he’s falling. Or floating. He is standing again, trying to make out the letters stenciled or scrawled on the sides of the cars as they rush past. Some secret code, perhaps, or a hidden meaning. He just needs to get closer, and he’ll be able to see everything. Become one with the noise. He leans forward.

A hoof is on his face, pulling his gaze away from the train. This pony is so tall, so very tall, and doesn’t pretend the train isn’t here. There are no hollow platitudes and no awkwardness. The stallion can’t hear a thing, and that somehow doesn’t matter, because there is no speaking. Only the road.

A railroad crossing is just that. It’s where rails cross the road. It cuts in two, divides. Separates. But there is a road.

The stallion takes a step forward. The noise remains, and hurts no less. This is what ponies do. They move forward.

The train can’t be stopped. The stallion knows this, but it doesn’t bother him any more. The noise can’t be stopped, or damped. But he can walk on.

He looks back, and reaches out a hoof to the mare. She shuffles forward the scant few inches to meet him. She falls. This is what ponies do, they fall. And they get up.

The stallion is carrying her, now. Or she is carrying him; he isn’t sure. They take a step away from the train. The mare grasps at his mane, lifting herself up until she can whisper in his ear. Of course, he hears nothing. But he doesn’t need to hear her warm breath on his ear, or the sigh that ends in a shudder with the last of the words she discards into the air.

He smiles.

Author's Note:

Click here.

Comments

[Enduring Cosmos]

FIRST!

[Full-time_Introvert]

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[NachoTheBrony]

Nice soliloquy.

[Hap]

5024223 Thanks.

[Bad Horse]

The writing is extremely good. You already said no one else will understand this--yeah, that's probably true. I certainly don't. I think maybe I could have, if I had the basic info I'd need to interpret the things that seem to be symbolic in accordance with their usual general meanings.

The train tracks in the road, and the crossing, indicate a life change. My first big source of confusion was whether the grimy, modern realism of the train, contrasted with the "fluffy clouds and candy colored days... cake... taffy cars, painted flowers, and cheerful mustachioed conductor" meant the stallion had crossed from Equestria into our real world. Probably, and maybe symbolically. Some of these things seem to definitely indicate the show-Equestria, and to be in the stallion's past on the other side of the tracks, so they support that the crossing = leaving Equestria. But some are said to be at the head of the same train that is now rushing past in gritty realism, which suggests Equestria is the past regardless of the railroad crossing, conflicts with the "leaving Equestria" interpretation, and gives us two crossings (leaving Equestria, plus whatever the railroad crossing represents).

Because this is a fan fiction, "leaving Equestria" is the default interpretation. I need some cues to help figure out whether "leaving Equestria" is the intent. This is especially difficult because if it is, it's probably a symbolic leaving of Equestria. This interferes with any other meaning you might have wanted the crossing to represent, as I can fit a lot of interpretations to "leaving Equestria", but if that wasn't the intent, them I'm twisting them in the process. In short, I need to know whether the railroad crossing symbolizes leaving Equestria.

Then, when the story mentions the other ponies, who seem not to have realized whatever the stallion has realized, I expect them to be still in Equestria, on the other side of the train. I can't tell which side they're on. My best guess is that they're on the same side, meaning they've also made the crossing. Then the crossing loses significance, because the thing that separates him from the other ponies isn't the crossing. I really need to know where the other ponies are. If they're on the same side as the stallion, then we have yet another divide in the story which cannot be associated either with leaving Equestria or with the railroad crossing.

My final main source of confusion was that the crossing is behind him. He moves forward--away from the train, apparently? I thought he was moving into the path of the train, and either killing himself, or somehow making the train unreal, until the very last paragraph of the story says he takes a step away from the train, so I guess he's moving in the other direction.

Where the crossing is, what's on each side of it, which side of it each pony mentioned is on, and which direction the stallion has been and is now moving in are all crucial in a story centered on the symbolism of the railroad crossing. All these things were vague and I could often only guess at them. His attitude towards the road--is it progress? fate? aimless? does he want or fear something at the end of it?--is also important but unclear.

I think you could make it clearer. I know that's scary with a story that contains a lot of personal meaning, because you hate to put some stripped-down version of it out there that people will look at and say "Is that all? Is that what you're so upset about?" And some people would say that even if you got it right, which you never can. I don't know how clear you could make it, since I don't know what you're getting at, but I think you could at least make the mechanical stage-blocking of your symbolism more clear, and then see whether you could--sorry--move forward from there.

[Hap]

7301058
I have to be honest. Not many people have read this. Fewer still bothered to think about what it meant. So, thanks for thinking about it, and thanks for taking the time to write about it. I hammered this out in just a few minutes, and didn't edit it extensively or have anybody preread it. I didn't expect it to be anything anyone else would want to read, but I needed to get it down and out of my head. Lilies of the Field is sort of a retrospective on the same subject, a year and a half removed, with actual effort put in.

I'm not sure if I'll ever go back and edit this story, but I can explain it a bit.

The road is life, I suppose. Time.

In between flashes of rust and rebellion, he can see the road that led to here. Green trees and sweet grass beckon from the irrevocable past, still bathed in the sunlight he can’t remember walking through.

You're right that the train is an event that divides the before from the after. The train looks different when you're looking forward to it than when you're looking back at it. He's looking back at it now, and it's dark, gritty. Deadly.

The before is a good time, a naive view of the world. Or maybe just a world without the gritty horror of what he sees. Maybe both sides are Equestria, maybe neither is. The other ponies are still living there, regardless of which side of the tracks they're on. The nice, happy world is more of a mindset than an actual location.

Have you ever stood next to a speeding train? I grew up next to train tracks, and a lot of freight trains went right past my house. I'd walk to school, the store, everywhere, by walking on the tracks. When a train came, you'd stand off to the side until it had passed. You can catch tiny, periodic flashes of the landscape on the other side, but you'd be hard pressed to catch any details. You would mostly see only what you already knew was there. No way you'd see another person, much less know what they were doing or how they were acting.

From facing the train, he turns around to look at the other ponies. I thought that was enough to indicate that the ponies were all on the same side of the tracks as he was.

He was moving backward on the road, back toward the train. Unable to move forward. He was leaning into it, and it took a part of him, until someone turned him around.

I can see how you would be confused about which direction he's moving when I wrote

The stallion takes a step forward. The noise remains, and hurts no less. This is what ponies do. They move forward.

I guess I was banking on people remembering that the road on the other side of the train is the one that led him to here? You're right that the direction is important, but sometimes the things you see so clearly in your head are the hardest to convey.

What lies ahead on the road? I don't know. He doesn't know. It's not important.

This is what ponies do. They move forward.

[Bad Horse]

7302511

Fewer still bothered to think about what it meant. So, thanks for thinking about it, and thanks for taking the time to write about it.

I don't usually. I thought the story deserved it.

[Gizmo Gear]

I feel this is quite philosophical. A philosophical rambling about how life goes on, no matter what we do. I will go and think about the meaning of life now.