A L O N E

Yesterday a train was stopped for a short time on the tracks spitting distance from our place, and in perfect view was a creamy white boxcar with the word A L O N E in huge, thick capital letters spanning the entire height and width of its flank. The word was just a shade brighter than the rest of the car, sort of in reverse shadow, the way words appear when you trace them in dirt or dust (usually on the butt of an auto or truck). I don't know if that's what had been done here. But if so, man, what a job! Each letter was perfectly drawn (and so huge), which makes me think I'm not right to think they were done by someone for kicks -- but really, why else would a train car have a huge A L O N E on its side?

We sure haven't seen anything like it before now.

I wanted to snap a pic of course, but I was on the phone with my mother-in-law when I noticed it and before I could get off, the train started moving...and then she was gone. Cue Steve Goodman's "The City of New Orleans" or any number of rail-ridin' songs.

Due to the nature of the word, it was a haunting image, uh, freighted with potential meaning. The kind of thing that could easily send me into gloomy reverie. But yesterday was a cozy rainy Sunday, me and my husband and the cats and some readin' -- so all I felt was disappointment that I didn't catch it with the camera.

No, actually that's not true. No gloom, but it doesn't take much for me to start pondering significance, constructed or otherwise -- for me to start building a story in my mind and meaning around a worldly object or phenomenon, idly imagining in any number of directions from this point of depature. And ALONE is a word that I, excessively self-reflective to the core, have given more thought to than many others. I've often thought of its French counterpart, seule, one of my favorites. And solitude has elegance and nuance, with its specifically human application, that alone can't match. But ALONE has its beauty too: the rich tones, the warm thud of its O and N in concert.

And, simply, I like the state it represents with such common grace. I've always enjoyed being alone, too much so for my own good. On the other hand I've been suffocated by aloneness time and again and have forced myself out to grope, winningly and failingly, for companionship, as do we all.

The truth is that I could spend the better part of the day rolling ALONE around in my head -- first as an exercise in navel-gazing, then as a meditation on train-hoppers and the lives they lead. They continue to get some brain time.