Craig Mod – AKA @craidmod.com:
Where am I typing these words? I’m sitting in a tiny café on the edge of a small city, surrounded by a lifetime of train love. Abject, unstoppable, fully-committed train and model train love. A little man behind the counter — an eighty-something year old guy who has no desire to chat with me, who can barely hear (probably why he doesn’t want to chat), and yet gets up each morning and opens his café (not for the cash at this point, as it doesn’t seem to be making any) — is running his perfect model trains around their magical track, a track that circumscribes the whole shop like locomotive hug, with beautiful handmade scenery and hand-painted backdrops. For nearly half a century, tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? probably) of people have come here and been filled with delight. Here, an obsession transmuted into love with a side of toast. Given the age of the shop, it’s in pristine condition. The counter polished, the trains without any dust. The egg sandwich actually an omelette sandwich with a bit of jam. (Yum.) The coffee strong. The music classical. I’m the only one here. Sitting in the corner looking at this incredible scene — truly a life’s work, a work of life. This, too, a political act. We forget that. Is it crazy to say that a place like this represents a pinnacle of a life well-used? It does in my eyes. Archetypes move humanity forward and the trains are beside the point: The play is the point, the full-throttled commitment to that play, the showing up day after day for it, the dialing in of a private obsession while simultaneously giving it back to the world as a gift. Play. Something we’ve lost. Certainly in this infinitude of toxic discourse.
