RE: For Whom Does the Bell Toll?–John Bourgeois

Dear Train Conductor,

I am a student of English at the local university and, as such, have the pleasure of attending a specific class in a particular room whose view provides me with the arboreal majesty (greens bursting forth, growing rich and full until that lusciousness of their palette consumes the reckless foliage and explodes autumnal, orange-ocher-crimson-vermilion-maroon-death, bare against the encroaching and persistent Puritanical sky and naked, icy branches) of the ever metamorphosing seasons while across the street is a fence being masticated in the vineal mouth of a symbiont of sempiternal bellicose sweet honey-suckle and gaudy trumpet vine, behind which is a recessed clearing where your grandiose train tracks challenge immortal Nature with incorrigible Progress, an ancient battle which will wage and roar for many days to come, so long as persevering men like you are on the lines of the conflict;

However, Sir, one issue must be raised with the manner in which you conduct, namely the damn repeated shrilling of your blasted whistle! if you are warning objects to clear your way that you are charging ahead, a single sounding would satisfy protocol, but your multiple blasts are ridiculous, because no creature larger than a raccoon-not a serious threat to your mighty train-can get through the fences and no cars can evade the crossing-rail; due to lack of a corporeal rationale, I suspect other psychological reasons for these vociferations; when you pass at night, your whistle is silent out of respect to the sleeping world, but in the day, you are obstreperous, and company manual responses concerning safety are illogical, so I posit a different reason for your locomotive’s call: a sign of existence, a barbaric yawp,

yes, I can comprehend that you would be desirous to sound your infinitesimal victories in a conflict that you can never win but whose results you may only postpone, but the most valorous of heroes carry their bravery silently, humbly within themselves content with defending their cultures, while the pusillanimous bellow of their meager exploits so that all the world hears like the bragging, belligerent drunkard in the dark street in front of the local workers bar, but be weary, Conductor, because the world soon grows jaded by braggadocio and detests its source, which is not to suggest that you are hated, far from it, yet if my pen is heeded, you will be loved more for the noble actions in which you are ever engaged,

How many hours a week do you guide the train along its endless expanse; what do you do when you are relieved; how do you spend the time which you get off; is it as satisfying as charging the engine, that metallic, gargantuan serpent which carries in its belly the blood and bile of the country, whose bite indiscriminately kills all, and who insinuates the trail marked by the never touching ferrous ribbons; do you have a family; an ex-wife or two with alimony checks going to each of them and several child who you never see, whose birthdays you’ve forgotten, who loathe you, who may not be yours, who you support with payments, money not spent on the upkeep of the children but on the greed of the leeching mothers, a term used loosely, and these contemplations must fill your mind as you sit in the control room of your train, your beast, your burden, your world, the only thing which you have complete control over, when everything else has been stripped from you and you are left in a cockpit, marginally aware of time with the locomotive’s horn in one hand and a cigarette which desperately needs ashing in the other, you honk, I, as a victim of a similar condition, understand you, you under-appreciated, bitter, miserable, ashamed, lost bastard, but find consolation in that this all is for naught because the rain will always fall and the plants will always grow and you will age, and another person will take your route when you collect your pension, and the whippersnapper who replaces you will become you, so that you will live forever through her as past conductors have persisted in you, and this letter can be resent in 20 years with only nominal changes, be made obsolete by a computer program which will become glitchy and unreliable (unlike the men and women who have run the line with their lives for generations, perfect for fear of breaking the chain of competency, an anxiety of never having known failure so that the fear of it weighs constantly on the steady hand at the helm) and when that happens, when the trains stop running, the corrosion will eat the iron, leaving only a pair of perfectly parallel red stripes, which wind around like a ball of rusty yarn, and will be batted about by the cat of the wind, mixing the rails finally, not only with the other but with Nature, and leaving nothing but the vines, trees, grasses, succulents, moss, ferns, lichens, fungi, rodents, birds, reptiles, but not humanity, not in the wild, from whence we have been incredibly removed for so long, not among the primordial due to our own choices,

all of it’ll fall upon our heads, and it’ll start again, and Mr. Conductor, people like you will be needed to clear it again so that people like me can have the opportunity to enjoy your efforts while mocking your sorrows, the over-educated hypocrites lashing the pitifully strained shoulders of those who carry us all simultaneously forward and apart, so that the cycle will continue, and the roars and silence will cancel out everything except for the echo of the past which is never dead, or even past;

in case I have not made myself absolutely clear, please stop tooting your horn so obnoxiously, because you’re just pissing people off without accomplishing anything.

Sincerely,

Affected Student