Sorry about the most recent rut. It seems to be happening a lot lately. This time, instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, I decided I would just post an old (very) short story I wrote several years ago. As you might could guess from the title of this post, it’s called The Train.
“Look at me. Look at what I’ve become. Everything. Nothing. Everything is full of nothing.”
The sudden whistle of the passing train jostled James from his thoughts for a moment. As he looked up he saw countless emotionless faces standing all around him.
“Empty. Life is empty. Life is meaningless.�
Another train signaled its arrival and distracted the thinker once again from his thoughts. The trains were all full of people, and yet, the trains were all empty.
Human existence is after all merely a sequence of events leading from birth to death. Once any single event has passed, that moment is gone forever and exists from then on only as a memory in individual minds. So people are really just memories too. If every moment we live in is a memory as soon as it occurs, the only time a person really exists is the present. And if the present is always changing, then a person’s existence can never be rooted in a specific concrete moment. So, people are really just beings filled with memories, and have no existence other than that. But what fullness does a nonexistent memory hold? None. A person is empty. After the final event, all the memories die forever and thus human history itself is a series of unattached empty events that are all dead.
James saw an old beggar in the corner of the terminal. His jar had but a few coins in it and, like the old man, was about to fall apart.
“If only he realized that his existence was empty and meaningless, he could rescue himself from his plight. Meaningless, meaningless everything is meaningless.�
Another train began to approach. James took his cue and moved to the edge of the deck. As the train came closer, he boarded his train and conquered his existence.
