Ripcord Adventure Journal 1.2 Second Edition

The land beyond the forest
Fearghal O' Nuallain
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My eyes attune to the moonlight and my mind focuses on the task
at hand.
I need somewhere to sleep. Farther up the tracks I see the silhouette
of what appears to be Orsova station ahead. Heavy boots scuff and
crunch on the rough aggregate as I walk along the train line. The
station unlocked. The taxi sitting outside with its engine running -
its exhaust fumes rising dreamily in front of the red tail lights would
lend the scene an incongruous air of urgency, if the driver wasn’t
lying with the seat thrown back, asleep at the wheel. The heavy
door has a large crack running diagonally across the glass, it creaks
as I open it. Inside is cold, silent. A mausoleum to communist
ideals, the station embodies the values and aesthetics of a time past.
A single circular light on the wall emits a dim glow that gives a
ghostly aura; providing enough light to see the form of the waiting
room and ticket desk but not enough to discern textures or colours.
To avoid unwanted attention, I do not use my head torch. The taxi
still sits outside, its engine running like a sanguine metronome. I roll
out my sleeping bag beneath the ticket booth, in the pale light. A
long fumble around my rucksack locates my toothbrush, I brush
my teeth taking care to spit into tissue, take off my boots and slip
into my sleeping bag. The marble floor beneath is cold and hard.
Undressing in the sleeping bag I collect my clothes and use them for
a pillow and lay down to sleep.
The surroundings infuse my thoughts as I drift asleep. The hubris
and brash optimism that inspired the peeling futurist mural of a
brave & purposive cosmonaut has long since faded but the patina of
utopia still shrouds the building. 25 years after 1989 it feels foolishly
naive. But so do all the best-laid plans of men. Someday, someone
will come across a dilapidated building and laugh at the capitalist
messages advertising phones and Facebook.
I lie here, on the cold floor watching my breath dissipate into the
faint sodium lights shining through cracked window and I can’t help
thinking of Marx. In the Communist Manifesto, he wrote that “all
that is solid, melts into air.” I think he meant that all that we take for
granted, all the certainties, the securities of any time, will one day
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