volume seventy-six

train kept a rollin’

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The person in the buddy seat pulls away their water bottle, backpack, handbag and jacket and with each item, I feel worse that this is the seat I have been allocated and not next to anyone who has left it vacant. Her items lock her into place, surrounded by her belongings. I slide into the now empty spot, craning my neck to see out the window over the chair back in front of me. Gumtrees with the tops out of sight and dry mountainsides and black and white cows zoom by as we pick up speed and I reach for my book from on top of my backpack at my feet.

I open it and stare at the page. I read the first line. And read it again. And again. And again. 

Across the aisle, two young strangers exchange loud tales of brand new cars crashed before they were enjoyed, and cheers beers over the back of the blue fuzzy seat that separates them.

I close my eyes for a moment.

The conversation grows louder. I pull the lever and recline my seat.

I pop in my headphones and put on a podcast and laugh to myself along our way with my head tilted back, contorted uncomfortably. No chance of rest and no way that I want to with my new soundtrack to lighten my journey. My eyes transition from open to closed over and over and when I giggle I notice the person next to me steal a side glance.

When I am done being flooded with glee, inspiration and delight from a hero oozing into my ears, I break for the washroom. On my return, one of the beer-holding strangers compliments my hat. He guesses me as a second child. He quizzes me on my travels. He smiles at every one of my answers and follows it up with another. I am now the one who is loudly conversing with a stranger and I am self-conscious.

Until my buddy — the one who had moved all of their stuff for me to sit — joins in.

Before I know it, the two shy girls who sat silently, both staring at their books and not reading them, are laughing with the stranger about cultures and siblings and controlling fathers and grumpy staff and hometowns and feminism and studies. I am sandwiched by two people from the same motherland, with similar family life, who now call Australia home, who educate me on other governments and forced principles and how their chosen paths, in my opinion as I listen, are going to change the world for the people around them.

As we continue on our long journey into sunset hours, the blue and green whizzing by us changes into golden hour behind us and stars appearing over us and then nothingness ahead of us. We enjoy pre-made salads with Nanny's Christmas leftovers, or homemade dahl, or train dinner orders that scrunch up the nose of the person eating it when I ask how it tastes. A woman in another row joins our conversation, as her teenage son stares out the window with headphones in, only showing movement when he gets up at every station to quickly suck back a cigarette as he sprints from one exit of the carriage to the other before we take off again. Another woman returns from the kiosk with the stranger, and joins us too. Telling us how bored she is and fills us in on the boy she is off to meet for the New Year. The stranger then tells us he is off to see his girlfriend for the first time in weeks.

When the woman departs a few stops later, we all stare out the window, excitedly exchanging what we each can see from our different viewpoints. Our own perspective of her being reunited with a new love.

The stranger announces that he has a Christmas card to write to go with the gift for his girlfriend, and having asked me many questions getting to know me and finding I am a writer, he asks for my help. We exchange ideas and pour them out on the crumpled card removed from his backpack with a red robin on the front.

When my seat buddy and the second car-crashing stranger depart at the next stop — snapping a group selfie and hugging us all as they grab their backpacks and belongings — the lights are turned out in the carriage and we are all encouraged to get some rest. Rest that might be more easily attained if we didn’t stop every so often at a new station, with people getting on and off and bright lights pouring in through my now-window-seat.

The rest might also have been more easily attained if we didn’t have the looming feeling of disruption. All of us knowing that at approximately 1am the lights were going to come on and we would all be awoken for a transfer to coaches due to track work.

At 1am everyone became a different person. Loud people were quiet, parents with children were flustered in a new slow-motion way, smokers were ecstatic for a longer stop and everyone lugged their luggage and boarded one of three buses. The only person who seemed unchanged was the mother of the teenage son who wore her grin as she had the entire trip, lighting up each face she passed and I wished her a Happy New Year. The first stranger and I jumped onto the same bus and fell asleep across from each other after a few sleepy words exchanged.

At 5am, the stranger and I traded information at the final stop and were strangers no more. He left to be reunited with his love, and I left to be reunited with my family that would involve cuddles of tiny arms wrapped around my neck and looks of awe as I stare at my sister carrying another perfect human soon to be in the world.

I just had an hour to wait, and another two-hour train ride to do so.

Who have you met on your travels?

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got an idea for a future volume? want to hear my thoughts on something? feel I am not sharing enough as a chronic oversharer? ask me an anonymous question and I will answer it in a future post.

here are three things I struggled with this week:

🌬️ Going with the flow.

🥵 Um, hi, did I actually once live in Australia? What is this Northern East Coast heat? It’s a yikes from me.

📧 My inbox obsession. I downloaded this extension and, so far? Brilliant.

here are three blessings from this week:

🪐 Solitude. My music through the housesit speakers. Fresh air through the windows and doors. Writing. Napping. Eating outside surrounded by trees. Swimming. Saying no.

💗 Cuddles.

🧊 Zooper Doopers.

here are three goals for the coming week:

🎨 Buy myself some good quality textas for my prints in progress.

🤣 Revisiting the old tweets of Gary Gulman, who back in 2019 shared comedy tips every day of the year. I am already having so much fun and falling in love with the process of comedy writing again since I began to play with these daily for 2023.

🌊 More swims.

here is something I enjoyed this week:

(screaming, crying.)

pics or it didn’t happen:

aunty lauren

I love you. I’m so grateful to those who read my substack 🧡 because I really love writing it to you,

LD

xoxo