There's something quite special about traveling at night by train. The world is darker, quieter. Things are being tided up and put away. There is a calmness to it all.
I enter the train and flip out the little laptop tray, hoping that this one doesn't have food or old gum attached. The carriage is empty and the light flickers gently. This feeling of going from one place to another reminds me of a lecture I had a few years ago on liminal space.
"To be on the threshold of something new, but not quite there yet. The physical space between one destination and the next".
A sense of nostalgia floods the train.
I think of my family, of my place in the world, of where I am and where I'll be. I feel bittersweet and yearn for the past. It's comforting, this space. Watching houses rush past me, the lights representing the stories of those that live there. Briefly my notifications matter less. I can barely make out a flock of birds in the night sky. I pass rivers and trees. I go through tunnels and past stations. My chair rocks gently back and forth with the tracks.
All at once a voice crackles from a nearby speaker tells me where I am, from a face I'll never see. The train screeches to a halt and the doors open. The place from where I was is now where I was going to, and my time in my liminal space ends.
