Darting Over Tracks

          stood by the railroad, surging with insuperable vigor. It was near six-thirty, but the sun still shone with greatness. It impaled me with its piercing rays, effecting a light of reason. Reason told me to turn around, walk back to my rented house, and finish off my homework. I sloughed this off. A part of me hungered after defiance.

         I had never been this close to a railroad. In Taipei, where I came from, railways were far from ubiquitous as in Japan’s. In distant memory, I drove over a few tracks by car, but that wasn’t a bit titillating.

         This was.

         I stood. I waited for the railroad fence to start closing up.

         Ding. Ding. Ding. The security bell for a coming train started to sound, and the railroad fence started to descend. With its fourth ring, bristling with an urgent warning of sensibility, I sprinted across the tracks.

         Five tracks within a gulp of air.

         “Will I have my last word?” This straightforward question floated inside my convoluted mind.

         I sprawled on the safe earth, eyes wide with disbelief. I was four seconds early. I spun around and watched the express train hurtle for Shinjuku. The ground shook violently, a shudder for my puerile act.

         This was my first time darting across railroads at the very last moment, my first time acting without thinking. I do not want to die or to commit suicide, yet I love flying over tracks when the fence starts descending despite reason chiming inside my head. This sprint was the most scary and most enlivening experience ever. This quaint blend of fear and excitement elicits a unique kind of joy.

         I was an inveterate gambler of my living. I bet on winning more reviving darts like a normal gambler would bet on winning more money. However, like probability will tell you, losing has a greater share. After this first sprint, I did it over and over, always trying to recapture the tinkling sensation running through my whole body the first time I did it, but it was never quite the same.

         That first sprint was a quintessential defiance, a defiance of a living within constricted boundaries for so many years, of obeying prescribed rules of the society, and of constantly abiding by sense and sensibility. Whisking over the tracks brought forth a congealed relic of emotional release.

         Being able to make that first sprint that afternoon, I extricated myself, and it was liberating, if only for a fleeting moment.