Stations like Stroud (and Macbeth)
They’re great theatre, railway stations, don’t you think? The platform as the stage with Life and Existence itself in the limelight. For it’s almost as if a state of beatitude is attained whilst sitting on that platform, regarding one’s fellow travellers. A temporary, fleeting, unification of opposites.
For there we sit and stand: colleagues on a platform about to share the same train and the same direction in life. And for that moment, as we glance at each other, assessing and guessing who we might be (our station in life as it were), we are unified by time and space.
But at the very same time, we are also cognisant of the fact that this unity is absolutely temporary – who knows where we are all eventually going, stopping and alighting? Who knows who we really are? What strange and ephemeral unity is this?
And then we stare at the platform opposite. All those people going the opposite way on a different train at a different time. We are divided by time and space: two railway lines divide us and a timetable too. Yet those passengers on the opposite platform are experiencing the same sort of epiphany too.
Somewhat perturbed by these earl morning philosophical reflections, I think a cup of tea might be just the ticket.
I glance in the mirror in the café and see Macbeth behind me, there in a chair, clutching a cup of coffee, whispering:
‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.’