Thought of Train

“I want to write on the train” I told Vaimo after waking up from a quick nap in our sleeper car. “You are” she replied with a smile in her voice, having mistaken my “write” for a softer “t” like a “d” as in “ride.” As someone with a minor obsession with trains (do Scorpios have “minor” obsessions?) I started researching this possibility of taking a train as one of my experiential excursions for my year of trains. Having begun this year’s journey with a deep(er) dive on trains with the successful application and acceptance to my first artist residency in Matfield Green, Kansas and then creating four paintings about railroad lineages, and then getting back into my book manuscript on the subject, trains and railroads are serving as major points of inspiration for my current series of narrative paintings. I have long known my Great Grandparents through my maternal father’s side immigrated from Mexico to the Midwest as a railroad laboring family. And, I’ve also since learned, my maternal mother’s father also worked for the railroad, and my father’s maternal line is part of my family’s lineage of railroading work. My Uncle W has an incredible model train collection. I’ve always been connected to trains whether I was conscious of it or not. As I’ve laid many tracks across four paintings in acrylic, I’ve thought about the physical toll that has taken on my body and how it is body work. But also, it is not the body work of actually laying rails in the 1920s, or driving spikes, or moving ties, or shoveling rocks. But, this is my body of work that I engage my body to make.

I am the type of person who likes to walk through antique stores, thinking about the things that once adorned someone else’s home and whether it may have a place in mine. A collector, like a crow finding shiny things for their nest, I peruse for bits and baubles in the piles of dusty collectables alongside junk, alongside treasures. My love of the rails emerges from this deep desire to know myself, by knowing my ancestors. While very unlikely any of their spikes, or ties, or rails remain on the routes they laid and repaired I liken the arteries contemporary diesel powered trains travel to the ways our human bodies regenerate after seven years or so. How we are ourselves but our cells and skin and hair and all these parts of us have regenerated, essentially becoming a new version of ourselves. Our snake skin is shed in small parts all over our living spaces, and public transit, portions of us taking flight in the wind, joining the dust particles we can hardly see until they’re mingling with the coating of dirt and debris on the overstuffed shelves at the thrift shop.

Train travel was once very glamours for a certain few. And, if you’re willing to pay more you can build a bit more luxury into the 21st Century train trip. Vaimo and I hunkered down in a roomette sleeper car for 17 hours as we trekked from Fargo, North Dakota and disembarked in Whitefish, Montana for my 40th Birthday Celebration. The thought of taking the rails came to me when logistically running through various scenarios at this stage in the pandemic for travel options. Having a private space to ourselves while also not having to drive 15 hours majorly appealed to me. While I’ve been on Amtrak trains in cities (New Jersey to New York, Baltimore to Washington, D.C. for instance) and have frequently made the trip from St. Paul to Fargo on Amtrak, my only other long distance journey on an Amtrak train has been from St. Paul to Chicago on the same line we’re on for this trip, simply heading in the opposite direction. Along with the private car that has two beds that fold out for sleeping (very useful for the completely unideal 3:24am departure time) the views from our room treated us to graffiti art on oil tankers, deer, eagles, turkeys, hawks, prairie chickens, and a variety of domesticated livestock. Mixed-grass prairie reaching Westward toward a mountainous embrace. Our ticket includes meals in the dining car, which, I must admit is way more fun than eating a sandwich in the car while I’m zipping through the countryside at 75mph across North Dakota. Certainly better than gas station fare, and a dining service that includes someone else taking an order and bringing it to you, (yeah, like a restaurant) was a treat. I wish we were eating on a vintage railroad dish set instead of plastic though. If I were in charge I’d select the china by drawing on the dinnerware from the great railroads of the past. I’d bring back their commemorative dining ware complete with the ability to purchase your own vintage set from the dining car for the collectors who like to ride the rails. Instead, this fancy serving ware set in plastic is meant to appear as if it was hand thrown and fired; silverware not of metal but a mirrored plastic. Cloth napkins of the thick yet soft paper towel variety instead of a fabric that can be laundered. Disposability and convenience supersede charm and luxury, it makes me think what would our ancestors think of this future? Where luxury is served in a compostable cup instead of glass?

How tragic and exciting all of the changes in one hundred years, where trains have new rails and tracks and mostly only the one skeleton of rails connecting this vast configurations of limited routes for cross-country travel. Where products and oil move in much greater quantities and frequencies than people do. Where writers and artists are less likely to find themselves on the rails, less likely to be struck by inspiration in this form of travel. Where resourced people are creating tiny homes in shipping containers instead of trying to make a go of it in company provided discarded boxcars. What a world we get to witness, I’m grateful on my last day of my 39th year I get to wonder as I rock on these steel wheels and marvel when we hit a bump which means we’re changing tracks, as I wander.

What I’m Reading

The Inheritance by Elizabeth A. Povinelli 

When I was teaching I used to love asking how the form of the writing contributed to the broader understanding of the content. This book, The Inheritance, is such a good contender for how the illustrations work to provide an additional layer of meaning behind the work. One part archivist genealogy and family history, one part analysis, this book provides a fantastic meditation on whiteness and racism in the US. It’s one of the only graphic memoirs I’ve read where the majority of the lettering is typed in, and in part this technique adds to the overall feeling of the work as crude. But upon reflection that crudeness evokes a sense of unease throughout the text and given the family’s history with myth making, connections to homelands, and patriarchal abuse it certainly provides just the right amount of messy edge to accompany the questions the narrative provides. Like the last newsletter’s book review (Monica Huerta’s Magical Habits that I’m still so obsessed with) this book challenges the form of memoir in terms of troubling the tension related to mythic heroes we make of ourselves or others.

Mansfield and Me, by Sarah Laing

Two book reviews this time because I have been reading a lot since the weather cooled and this book relates to the last. Laing’s graphic memoir is more traditional in the sequential arts sense in that it’s beautifully produced with gorgeous watercolor illustrations and hand lettering. The memoir is a blend of the author’s life interwoven with the life of a fellow New Zealand writer of the past who she becomes obsessed with - Katherine Mansfield. It’s a tale that spans history and Laing is so great at connecting her life to what she uncovers about Mansfield’s. What I also found most refreshing is Laing’s deep craving to be seen and her consistent questioning of what it would feel like to make it. #RelatableContent

Artist Offerings

• This essay wowed me about the IG aesthetics of cozy and the pitfalls of white sterile femininity 
• I virtually attended a conversation between Mark Bradford and Julie Mehretu and have been on a deep excavation of Mehretu’s theorizing of her marks 
• I feel like I link this anytime I come across writing about it, but this article made me start dreaming about my May plans when I will be at The Cheech the month it opens!

Creative Ritual

We can’t be in full harvest mode all the time, and the last two weeks I have mostly been finding myself deep cleaning our home, prepping my studio for new works, and thinking a lot. I’ve been reading to ground myself (and to be honest avoid the writing I need to do) but at least I know my habits. I’ve worked on an essay going out to a journal, and doing a lot of logistical work connecting with people and places where my work will be up soon. I started this 30 day embroidery class ages ago and I am insistent I will get through the lessons by the end of the year (you learn a new stitch everyday). For the person who doesn’t have approximately 63 projects up in the air at one time that juggle may be a little easier goal to accomplish. I’m learning to be gentle with myself because as much as I wish, I have not yet gained the superhuman traits that would allow me to do all of the things I desire to do in the ways that would be most wonderful for my spirit.

Questions to Ponder

What trains of though are you pondering right now?
Are you on track?
What energy or task on your to-do list needs your attention in the last weeks of 2021
What might you need to shed right now?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF

Psssst! Tomorrow's my birthday! (And I'll probably still be talking about it next newsletter) but in the meantime you know what would be a great gift? Sharing this with someone you think would enjoy! As always, you can monetarily support these efforts by buying me a Ko-Fi. Thanks to those of you who sustain this project monthly!