I just woke up. Well, for the second time.
I wonder sometimes what the difference is.
Between the first time you wake up, and the second. It was probably an hour.
I won't wake up with an alarm clock. I put my foot down there. I know, it sounds "baby-ish." But tough shit. I won't do it.
I guess I get defensive about the things I do.
Hmmm.
Tough shit.
Anyway, sorry: but between the first time and the second time?
I like to have time to think about whether I want to wake up yet.
See what's happening. A little bit. Would it be nice to fall asleep again? Is it too cold to get up; do I want to stay under the covers.
Covers; blankets.
And sleep.
Sleep is our friend. But not if I dream too many bad dreams. In a row. Then I get to where, I resent it.
What happens between the first and second time you were awake? Are you sposed to get up? Is that the rule? And that nothing happened that should?
No.
There aren't any rules like that.
People say there are, but there aren't.
It's always happening.
Maybe.
(How do I know?)
Take the call. Take the sleep. Take the dream.
Get up if you want. I just remembered waking up when I was a kid. What happened, a lot of times.
Because of the sun angle here on the porch. Because when I look up, I see that window; the rectangles of light; and they curve down over the back of the couch.
I did like waking up; I did. I would hop. Hop out of bed. Hop off the porch; hop a long. Or sit down on the steps. In the shade. Morning shade. Forget my breakfast.
The sun would be like on the porch. I know that has to be, or I wouldn't have remembered it. THAT's the way you're supposed to wake up; you're supposed to wake up when it's time to start.
I'm grown up now, so starting means different things. Usually, a list.
I guess.
I wish it still meant the same.
I wasn't smart, then; know all these things. Or maybe so stupid. Because I think I was smart.
I'm more sophisticated now. Big deal. A bundle of reactions. A cube. More me, less oh boy. More menace. Need to relax. Obviously.
Speaking of bent, I saw a railroad spike. A bunch of them. Picked them up, took them home, sat and drank whiskey with Tech. Looked at them. I held one up; it was bent in the middle. Well; curved. It bends. If you hold it from the pointy tip, opposite the top, opposite where it was pounded, it will bend away from your fingers, from vertical, the way it was bent. There are all different kinds. Lay them on the ground.
The pounding-head is also the clip that holds down the rail. Catches the rail.
Handy. Cinching down the rail to the tie, with the head of the nail. But this one is bent. Most of them are bent. Why?
They're three quarters of an inch thick of pure iron. Three quarters square. And not very long. How did they get bent?
Not when they were driven into the wood. The spike is too big, too coarse. Too stiff. It would just go in there. You can pound it with a sledge, and I think it would wedge-split the wood, before it would bend.
It wasn't bent to get it close to the rail, to bend it over there; to get it to catch the bottom flange of the rail to make its cinch. If you sledged the spike over there to get closer to the rail, it would weaken the wood and the holding power of the spike. It would definitely loosen it.
Why would you put in a spike, just to loosen it. Duh. Hey. You.
To get it to stand up straight next to the rail when you're pounding it by, they set the rail in a groove that's milled or cast on the top of a flat plate, a flat metal collar, that slides under the rail, between the rail and the wood. It has square holes, on either side, right up next to the rail, and you start the spike there, and it goes down tight. Nice and straight; with the wood grabbing it tight. With thewood compressing against it the flanks of the spike. No sloshy wedging.
The wood has to hold the spike; it's the only thing holding the spike, and the spikes are the only thing holding the rail.
I don't think you would bend many of these spikes driving them. They are too tough for wood. Any wood but maybe a bitch oak knot. Maybe; maybe knot.
So how do they get bent.
I don't know.
I don't.
But I am guessing, the trains do it. That's what Tech and I guess. That the train shoves the rail, over and over, until the spike gets bent. Over-n-over. The spike is a record of every motion exerted on it.
A record of force.
This might not be true. I don't know. There might be some other forces. But whatever it takes to bend that short piece of metal, is a big force. What kind of major force comes along there? A train. And time. Time is the other element I can readily think of; because you can almost always put time in a situation and then just figure out what it's doing there.
Wood that's outside expands and contracts, squeezing the nail out, like skin and a sliver. But it forces it out backwards. Exactly the way it came in. It pushes backwards, relentlessly. Squeezes it like a bottle of shampoo. The wood is always moving; you could speed it up and see it spit the spike out.
Obviously, the rail gets loose if that happens.
The spike is the only thing holding it down.
Gravity isn't much of a force here until a train puts it on top of the rail. Then, it hurts.
The rail tries to squish down and then lifts as the train goes by, like a spring, and tries to pop the nail right out of there. Like an eighty-ton hammer. Once they get loose, it's problems. If the rail moves the track spreads.
The steel wheels of the train are wedge-shaped. They are circles with a bevel on them, so that it can swing corners, slide around corners, with simple steel; the outside wheel drifts up onto its shoulder and the inside wheel sinks to it's small edge; gets pulled to its edge, and it's an additional force that leaves the heavy train always pushing the rails apart.
Loose rails "lose gauge." Plunk. Trains are heavy and steel is springy, and they are conspiring, goddam them. Not very nice.
But how does a spike get bent? So radically.
YOU couldn't bend one.
I guarantee it.
I would enjoy seeing how you would try it. You can use whatever force you think will bend it, and I bet you can't. I have three dollars on the spike. No offense; I would need to think carefully to bend it without heat.
When people look at a spike, they don't think, "IT'S BENT." They think it's old and dirty. It is. It's as old as the star. But it started straight as a spike, and the fact it's been bent is significant. But you don't notice that at first. Even I.
You think, "It just got bent. BFD."
Well, no, it didn't just get bent.
And that bend is the story. The exact, unique, story, of its life. Its time and forces. Its conditions. Everything that happened to it.
It's a museum.
A record. Almost like a vinyl one.
It doesn't have a choice to memorize,
it just gets shoved around.
If it happened, it's there. Folded crushed metal. Broken muscle. Whimpery tears. Big things made it happen. Whatever made it happen was tough.
Sometimes you see spikes that have rusted down to teeny wires. Teeny pencils. Giacometti spikes. Giacometti type "legs." That's a different story. Of age. Of culture, the culture of dissolution. The spike is dissolving into the air and soil. Going back to being mixed iron earth.
There might be 160 spikes per length of track. Each in a different position. Every spike anywhere, is in a different position. Had different clouds pass over, different rain, different grain, different cold, different pushes and shoves, from the wood and rail. It's all recorded; in how far pushed out it was. The freight came along and pushed its plate sideways. Was it pushed at the shoulders? The waist? Were the rest of its family sharing the push? Taking it? Everybody is taking it. Getting bent and pushed and pulled and choked at the neck. It's not very nice. Nobody cares. But if you cared about that, you might be nuts. I will worry about a section of track and see what happens.
Techie and I were walking along the rusted, about to be pulled up track; picking spikes that were up the highest, shoved out the farthest, and lifting them out of the wood. Pulling them out, with their last resistance. Mup. Still stuck in there, stiff; even though the head is up almost as high as the rail; but we could wiggle them out. Wiggle some of them out.
"Baby" teeth.
To take home. Might as well take them home. It's all going to the scrapyard. The dynamic record. Who cares.
As far as absorbing their forces though, "they're finished."
Cooked.
Completely cooked.
"Done;" they're done.
Ready.
They're about to be removed viciously, torn up; so we might as well take them. And give them appreciation. Not that they care. (How do I know.) ("Thank you - thank you - thank you.") (You're a talkative little spike, aren't you?) ("I want to crucify you.")
When we got back to the main track, he spotted one and pulled it out, and I said don't do that. "This is live rail." And he said oh, and realized what we were talking about.
I'm going to go look, and see, what makes them bend.
Like god. |
