Ability & Opportunity

The train chugged slowly up the hill as it usually does, as it always does. He remember how back when he was but a child, clueless, curious and careless, roaming on what was the world, how eager he was waiting for the bright yellow train to pass.

It was somewhat magical, these steel leviathan, loud and mighty, he thought. Who are those people in it so strange and so alien, their eyes piercing deep into the skin and flesh of his Cerdanya in that moment so brief.

The always pass, they never stop.

Where do they come from, he asked his father on that one morning when he followed his father along the path to the far side of the farm. Nowhere, my son. Nowhere. The old man would say. They are on a trip from nowhere to nowhere along nowhere. That is what it ever is, that is what it ever will be.

So, are we nowhere father?

No, we are here in Plenty Cerdanya.

He looked at his father.

Now don't you worry about those train, those people. They are no one.

No one?

Yes. No one from nowhere.

He frowned, for his father never ever gave straight answers. Always a puzzle, always something deep and philosophical. Sometimes he would stay up all night trying to see the meaning behind his father's words. Occasionally he wonders if his father simply said those nonsense to make up for his simple education, for what he lacked in formal education, he makes it up with his unwavering pride. Nonetheless, everytime that thought came to his head, he would be found that morning, hugging his dad just before breakfast with teary eyes and lips uttering endless sorries.

It's okay my son. It's always okay. He never had to say why.

That evening, the father went out of the house and dragged his cart to a place not far from where the rails are, and sat there, waiting. As the yellow train chugged down the hill, he looked and saw in the train. Himself and his son.

As the train again disappeared behind the hills of his land that he loved, he cried.

Janvier 2010.
French Cerdagne, Pyrenees.
Pre-LSI Lomo LC-A + Fuji Sensia 200 + C41 chemistry + Ability is of little account without opportunity, said Napoleon.