best description of a train trip?

It's when you are seated looking back, travelling fast, and you look out the window, listening to some minimal techno with distorted bass, hissy hihats, or simply Bergheim34, and you notice how despite your travel; the pattern you see out the window is the same. The telephone poles, the electrical poles, the trees and houses all passing according to a certain rhythym. The wires parallel to the train path, hitting top high on the pole with celerity and drop down again to a plateu. Sometimes they dissapear only to come back again; matching your beat.

this description will indeed use the tune as its soundtrack...so please press play before reading...is it playing? ok, go ahead...

"hey dude, Why don't you grab one of the poles? You're gonna fall..."
It was my friend Jamie warning me to grasp one of the metal rods that joined the floor and ceiling of the subwaycar. The trains are rather jerky when they start up and are laible to give any unanticipatory passenger a jolt. Though I was no "unanticipatory passenger," I was an experienced TTC rider. Every day for the past 10 years I had riden the rails to both my schools. And every ride for those ten years, i had practiced my balance.
Its like riding one massive metal surf board contained in a wave that speeds down an eves-trough. I'm the type of individual who enjoys gliding, sliding, rolling on anything and it seemed ridiculous to pass up the opportunity of taking advantage of this massive skateboard.
Jamie and I had has this conversation many times, and this time was no exception. "Dude, grab the pole.." He said after the train took another 'unexpected'jolt.
I ignored him. The subway emerged from underground into the bright sunlight. A chorous of eyes squinted until they adjusted. Right after Davisville station Mt. Pleasant cemetary is visable from across the road which the tracks run parallel to. Both of us look at the extremely familiar sight. Though, we're still captivated by it. Rushing past the past.I wouldn't be suprised if one were to take a glance around the car at all the passengers and see everyone glance up at the some sight. Kids with earphones pretending to be in a movie look up, and see past their reflection onto the manicured plots of the cemetary. An old woman with one of those two-wheeled pull carts, raises her head to glance at her friends gone past. She wonders if waving makes a difference...

We slip into darkness again nearing St. Clair Station. The loudspeaker above us crackles to life "Sintt..Clerr" it says. Its my stop. The train begins to slow. I lean back to counter the loss of inertia. My new running shoes grip the linolium train floor perfectly. Perhaps the spilled dr. pepper i stepped in from earlier in the day adds a little grip too. The train continues to slow. I continue to lean back. By this point I'm at a forty-five degree angle in the train. I could almost lean my hand back and touch the floor. But right before that moment, right when I'm on the edge of falling, i shift my body weight a little farther forward. I prepare for the kick back of the train once its fully stopped. My body the pendulum swings back to its upright position...the train had stopped. I'm there...
Through doors, up the escalator, a hop on my board, and I'd soon be home...

Metro-North trains smell like stale urine. This is probably because the lavatory doors don't tend to stay closed. Unfortunately for the American romantic in me, these are the only trains I spend any regular time on. I sit in the extra-slidy seats, headphones jammed into my ears, watching the people nearby. There's the inevitable guy who's worked late and is heading home, most likely to an empty-sounding house (wife and kids long asleep, dishwasher running, slip off clothes and put on pajamas silently, dream fitfully); the young lovers intertwined, her asleep and him making sure nobody's looking too hard at the exposed flesh between her short shirt and low-riding pants; the drunks. The train bumps along, the windows too filthy to allow me to see where we are, leaving me to guess linear progress by approximate speed and time of departure.

Sometimes I pretend I've hopped onto a boxcar and the other people in the train car with me are my fellow hoboes, men with colorful names and better stories. It is on Metro-North trains that I thank everything I believe in for my imagination and my iPod.

This will reveal me as the sad trainspotter than I am, but I'm pretty certain that the Domino issue of A Strangely Isolated Place doesn't have any bonus material. I think it was supposed to, but after delays, it ended up being released the same as the Morr version. I think the extra tracks are the various compilation pieces that ended up on the Faraway Trains bonus disc.

This is one of my top five, if not my favorite song to date. Even though I'm constantly searching for new music, I come back to it again and again. It's so lush and full of beauty - sad, yet uplifting and sweet all at once. If I was on a train ride, I would be passing by...layer by layer... meandering out of black mountains, opening onto fields of yellow grass with soft gentle breezes swirling, sunlight reflecting off the dark blues waves, seagulls weaving in and out, and then all of this filled together and then leaving it all behind.

this is niiiiiiiice. i won't even attempt to write something....

if spelling counts in this little contest, i'd like to correct my poor little piece...

1. I made up the word "unanticipatory" (took advantage of my poetic license.
2. "laible" - liable
3. "Riden" - ridden
4. "Chorous" - chorus
5. "Cemetary" - Cemetery
6. "Visable" - Visible
7. "Suprised" - Surprised
8. "Linolium" - Linoleum

I feel much better now... hope this clears up some of the meaning in my little story.

Benny

Wow. This is a near perfect companion piece to the B. Fleischmann song Mark posted a few weeks back; 'Broken Monitors'. They're like old lovers, I'm never going to be able to hear either or without the other now.

Truly beautiful electronic music. Melancholy but uplifting, the aural equivalent of getting off (to keep the analogy going) a train to embrace someone you've longed to embrace for longer than you thought possible. Relief, adoration, but almost sad that the need that has been driving you so long is now fulfilled.

Benny! You are a winner!

I am? That rocks! Thanks so much. I'm rather new to your site, but it's made it onto my daily-bookmarks. I saw about this site on Death Cab For Cutie's page... so I guess I owe them a thanks as well. This site has been a godsend in the midst of all my exams and final papers. Music for Robots makes procrastination easy.