Excerpt from 'Building in Stone'

“There were desperate days when the sand we sifted held no meaning,” he said.
“I looked at the plain glass window and saw nothing but reflection, the image of a man absorbed by nothing but his own self.”
Across the flat, sweeping expanse of the salty marshes, an image of incomplete exactitude did appear. But its vibrancy and coherence were distorted by the dirty smears that rippled out from a single, fragmented crack in the window-pane as much as by the flickering landscape beyond. The fields bore swathes of inquisitive animals perched atop grassy knolls and gently insinuating streams which broached the spongey terrain with effortless perseverance. Through the crack, it seemed as if the wind could whistle in to speak of untold secrets from faraway lands, and that the sun could forge its golden rays into a single, elusive unity.
I stood at a distance, tentatively pawing the still and sultry air that lingered in the train carriage. I had been peremptorily halted by the man’s passing thoughts, the substance of which had come to me clearly and without hesitation. In fact, when I stated, “he said”, a moment ago, perhaps I was being unclear, disingenuous maybe. And I’ll have you know, I am nothing if not clear.
What I should say, rather, is “he thought”. For these articulations were borne in a quite different way to the mild utterances of speech or the harsh declamations of authority that go to comprise “spoken” language. Nor were these articulations simply bodily gestures, inferred on my part from physical movements or subconscious tics. Rather, these messages, if I am able to call them that, came to me not as expected or solicited responses, nor readily anticipated or scalable sounds; no, instead, they came more like great, directionless tsunamis, torrential in their impact and stunning in their implication. For, I should state unequivocally now, that I possess the ability to have unrivalled access to people’s thoughts, that I wander the carriages of trains, and that I am a spectre, a fraction of my former self.
If I am to ride the wave, so to speak, of these undiscriminating outbursts, I have necessarily to install a kind of filtering system. This has come to me over the months. From the early days of emotional disorientation and mental collapse when I was bombarded by a hail of unforeseen leave-takings, unwarranted eruptions, and unthinking recriminations, I have since learnt to separate out all but the most pertinent remarks, a task that has been as exhausting as it has been worthwhile.
Right now, these approaches are nothing unusual to me. For I have become accustomed to the regular assaults on consciousness that fail to administer notice of their impulsive arrival, adapting much like a hotelier who finds one day that his guest has departed without so much as a note of goodbye or a token of thanks. You learn to adjust, to make do, and to press on. I myself have become used to apprehending the passing reflections and momentary reminiscences of the innocent train passengers, finding in them something solid and substantial where before there was only haze and ambiguity.
It is almost as if I am able to capture that transient kernel of truth from the depths of a person’s imagination and memory, that I have access to hidden zones of meaning denied everyone else. You’ll testify to this experience, I know. You’ll testify to that frustrating and nauseating incapacity borne by all but the most gifted of individuals, that inability to retain or arrest those thoughts and ideas that nevertheless imprint an indelible note of profundity on the soul. They come so rarely, but these moments are marked by a gentle lift, a surge of life and happiness that dissolves the surrounding gloom in an eruption that sends out ripples in all directions, circumscribing all and sundry, and impacting upon everyone.
Perhaps these moments only come at night, when the barriers to self-realisation or, should I say, the barriers that fortify the self in all its apartness and isolation, crumble to the ground like sandcastles lying too close to the water’s edge, broken by a crisp wave in the early summer dawn. If you recognise this understanding, however tentatively, you’ll reckon my skill here somewhat enviable. Yet you’d be mistaken. I’ve lost something I can never recover and I’ve only recently come to know it.
For I roam this predetermined space now. Some might say I’m a fugitive, an absentee on the run from truth. Either way, I float along forlornly, touching no one, invisible to the naked eye, contemptuous of nothing but myself. What brought me here was the comforting security of it all, the way the physical train-carriage represented a space of familiar certainty that opposed the wandering thoughts and reflections of the railway passengers which, released from the shackles of human finitude, could traverse diverse and unique landscapes without limit or encumbrance. The way the train hugged the tracks with unswerving dedication, ripping the air and disturbing the grassy verges with regular and unbiased emphasis.
When the right person comes along with some new perspective that can shed light on my own past, I am able to burrow deeper into my subjectivity, to get closer to that something that I’ve let slip. After having met a few of these so-called important figures who have allowed me the opportunity to piece together how I got into this state in the first place, what they’ve said, or what I’ve overheard them think, has triggered something deep down in my unconscious, something hidden from view by a protective mechanism, a defensive barrier.
The man in the brown overcoat whose thoughts had involuntarily entered my stream of consciousness appeared strangely familiar, more so than the other figures who broached my head-space that day. With his face turned then towards the land, then towards the sea, he met my pensive gaze only on occasion, fighting a furrowed brow with the urge to appear amiable.
As for me, I take a train ride everyday, pacing solemnly at a given hour and in a given space, rightly fulfilling my duty by forgoing the air. At times, I feel myself to be awfully numb, as if my mind is subconsciously safeguarding some notion of freedom that refuses examination. At others I find that I am suspended in harmless satisfaction in the old world, invisible to others as much as to the wind that gently and unfathomably goads my skin. It is becoming clearer now though, this state of living. If I return to the beginning, maybe I can show you how.