Listening to Patti Smith's M Train on the B train from Paris to Amsterdam
by
Annabel Wilson
YOU CANNOT TAKE WAR RELICS ON THE TRAIN, says the sign as I board. A kitten meows from somewhere further down the carriage. At 17.25, the Thalys leaves Paris Nord, slinking like lipstick from its case. And now some strangers, the kitten and I are on the Grand Ligne, hurtling towards Brussels-Midi, then Amsterdam. Graffiti morphs outside, loops and swoops of throw-ups and tags: GAP SPONE Tige Tige TRAN SOBR BECK EPOK! Language swallowing itself over and over on the barricades beside the tracks. Across from my no-frills seat, three couples with Northern Californian accents shout-talk TripAdvisor sights. I prefer the Expressionists to the Impressionists / We got lost in the Louvre, and accommodation prices East is Best! It’s cheaper and trendier! Around their roomier 1st class booth. Slotting in my earbuds, I turn up Patti Smith reading M Train.
“We want the thing we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother’s voice...” Past my own reflection, another train slides by. A woman with a child snuggled close catches my gaze, and soon, I’m thinking about the mothers thinking about their mothers thinking about their kids until my thoughts become a subtle fizz inside my chest. It’s a short shuffle to the toilets at the end of the carriage where no one can hear the thud thud of my breast pump above the train’s 300km/hr whoosh, which could be white noise within a womb or whalesong.
“Everything changes… Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.” I listen to Patti Smith. Trying to ensure my work trip doesn’t spell the end of my nursing the baby I’ve left behind. On my phone, I watch my child sleeping, which helps with the longing and the let-down but is also creepy. Outside, a sage/beige patchwork of fields dotted with steep-roofed cottages. We’re moving so fast. Everything fades. Beyond Lille’s sunset-soaked spires, those might be Chapelle D’Armentiere's military cemeteries in the distance, but we’re moving too fast to really see or know. I push the SORTIE button and exit the bathroom. Two women from the couples are waiting. I consider saying sorry or explaining the medical equipment — but I don’t because I’m listening to Patti Smith read M Train on the B train to Amsterdam, where everything is a museum. Everything is over before it began, because Instagram.
Silent fields. White horses. Blurred blue. As I slide back into my seat, I see someone behind me reading All Quiet On The Western Front, and Patti asks, "Why is it we lose the things we love?” Rumble, shudder. Bridges carry us over sepia rivers, steel arms falling, rising. And now she’s talking about her beloved jacket “with poems dripping from its sleeves,” and Jim Morrison’s pants, which Joan Didion calls vinyl in The White Album (the internet says leather), but everyone’s clear he wore them without underwear, and I wonder what happened to the kitten.
“We want the thing we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother’s voice...” Past my own reflection, another train slides by. A woman with a child snuggled close catches my gaze, and soon, I’m thinking about the mothers thinking about their mothers thinking about their kids until my thoughts become a subtle fizz inside my chest. It’s a short shuffle to the toilets at the end of the carriage where no one can hear the thud thud of my breast pump above the train’s 300km/hr whoosh, which could be white noise within a womb or whalesong.
“Everything changes… Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.” I listen to Patti Smith. Trying to ensure my work trip doesn’t spell the end of my nursing the baby I’ve left behind. On my phone, I watch my child sleeping, which helps with the longing and the let-down but is also creepy. Outside, a sage/beige patchwork of fields dotted with steep-roofed cottages. We’re moving so fast. Everything fades. Beyond Lille’s sunset-soaked spires, those might be Chapelle D’Armentiere's military cemeteries in the distance, but we’re moving too fast to really see or know. I push the SORTIE button and exit the bathroom. Two women from the couples are waiting. I consider saying sorry or explaining the medical equipment — but I don’t because I’m listening to Patti Smith read M Train on the B train to Amsterdam, where everything is a museum. Everything is over before it began, because Instagram.
Silent fields. White horses. Blurred blue. As I slide back into my seat, I see someone behind me reading All Quiet On The Western Front, and Patti asks, "Why is it we lose the things we love?” Rumble, shudder. Bridges carry us over sepia rivers, steel arms falling, rising. And now she’s talking about her beloved jacket “with poems dripping from its sleeves,” and Jim Morrison’s pants, which Joan Didion calls vinyl in The White Album (the internet says leather), but everyone’s clear he wore them without underwear, and I wonder what happened to the kitten.