trains.

scene (background music, aria - "ave maria"): trans-siberian railway. camera close to train tracks, ground level. steel rail and wood crosslay beneath, long as a dragon sprawled across all of the cold the dark the harsh tundras. heavy blizzard. night. everything's black except for snow falling to bury the world. horizon is a faint gleam.

train blasts by, sending up twin fans of snow, trailing a white mist, shaking snow off the branches of a dead tree crooked over the past.

camera rises, phantomlike; POV follows train. chases, levels, pans sideways, strafing along as though on coasters, keeping pace. sense of speed given by obscure shadows whipping by, blurred, in darkness. camera zooms in on dim lights within. protagonist: young revolutionary, fur cap, thick winter jacket, several day's beard growth on an intense, sharpedged face, gently swaying in the rhythm of the train, haggard eyes staring unseeing out. cradled in his arms, half on his lap, protagonist's woman, deathly pale and mortally wounded.

camera starts to lose pace. train passes by, at first imperceptibly faster, then accelerating relative to camera until it blurs. camera rises above tracks and pans out to reveal snow-choked landscape through which tracks carve a distinct curving twin black path, racing on to and past the horizon. on it, red tailight of the train, growing small.

wtf is it about trains? somehow they're so evocative. i was discussing this with liz. we decided it was something about the rhythm of the wheels over the tracks, muted but everpresent; the inevitability of the tracks laid down firm; the enclosure of the cars and the closed windows, yet still allowing that final brief aching contact in the way planes never will; the out-of-your-control motion, where the train might (will) start moving any minute, and there's not a thing you can do about it.

there's only so far you can follow on the platform, only so fast you can run. there's only so much time you have before the train becomes a red dot, becomes nothing. but the tracks linger on and on, in memoriam.

scene (background music, bliss - "kissing"): one of those tastefully-shot tender-lovemaking scenes. golden indirect luminescent lighting, indistinct glimpses: thighs intertwined, abdomens pressed movingly together, lips on underside of jaw, divine-rapturous face, closed eyes, parted lips; white sheets artfully rumpled. scene seguing into next--

long shot down train platform, grey concrete walk with glass overhang, once clear, now dulled and almost opaque with age and exposure. late afternoon, heavily overcast, sky a cast of silver-grey. gentle rain falling like mist. train tracks stretching across barren late-autumn plain, all the crops harvested, all the fields fallow. bare trees line the path of the tracks. protagonist on platform in thick dark overcoat, gloves and scarf, head bare.

overhead speakers announce times and trains in indistinct foreign language. train, black train engine w/ dark cars, is beginning to pull away. cut to window: we recognize the woman from previous scene, prim now in careful makeup and 1940s traveling attire, upper class. looking out, sorrow creases her brow. dimly reflected, protagonist's desolate face.

train begins to move faster. rhythm of the tracks. camera stays with woman in the window. emotions build and are bitten back on her face. reflected, protagonist growing smaller, face pulling out to a head-and-body shot to a full-figure shot, indistinct in the window.

like a man in a dream, he takes a few steps after the train. woman in window presses gloved knuckles to mouth. protagonist slowly raises a hand in farewell. the woman presses her palm flat against the window; tears spill over as image of man in window blurs and grows too small to see.

camera pans out. flat grey horizon under flat grey sky. steam train rolling away.

i have no fucking clue why my train scenes are all so desolate. it seems to fit though. hmm.

gah!