My life as a train

Johnny Cash loved to sing about trains. "Folsom Prison Blues" is a great one. His last composition is a beautiful number called "Like the 309" on his new CD "American V: A Hundred Highways."

Todd Snider has a great song efficiently called "Train Song."

Life as train is a popular metaphor for songs and poetry. However, you almost never hear about life as a car or airplane or zeppelin or submarine. (Though, of course, we all do live on a yellow submarine).

A train is a romantic idea, nostalgic and powerful. Thousands of dangerous or romantic scenes from films took place on trains. Hitchcock seemed to use them quite often. "North by Northwest" "Strangers on a Train" "The Lady Vanishes" Not too mention other films such as "It Happened One Night" and "High Noon" (My personal favorite shot of a train - they lost a camera filming it!)

The imagery in these films is usually quite beautiful, but to be honest the idea of life as train is terrifying to me. After all, as a passenger the major difference between the train and everything else (boat, rocket ship, golf cart, hot air balloon, etc) is the lack of control. Not only are you not driving the train (unless you're a train conductor, in which case I apologize. You may stop reading. You control your destiny), but the train can only go where the tracks go.

We're all so willing to accept this comparison without ever thinking about what all it means. Total lack of control. You don't know where you're going and you can't go back to where you've been.

It's a one way shot. No stopping. No detours. So often, I want to go back to change mistakes, but the train keeps rolling. If life were a car, we could simply turn around or throw the thing in reverse.

But life isn't a car. It's a train.

I'm trying to learn to live with that, but it's pretty hard.