Engineering confusion

Comes a time when your tediously long train of perfectly linked, smoothly drawn carriages on unshakeable rails, their insides insulated from the grim air and jaunty light begins to rattle. The engine, so long disciplined to move, station to station, trained to learn and know only the next direction - and to know it well - to think nothing but onward momentum, forward draw, to know only the pull, the roll, the pusrposeful slicing of air and fog and dark and day, and to whistle and blow, that it could all move that way or that - that engine, draws to an abrupt halt because someone somewhere, a human hand, has pulled upon a dangling chain of questions that have the power to slow, confuse the mindless pistons, stop - and I am afraid, even derail.

So AJ, what way, and with what new certitudes? And how do you know there is a station at the end of this journeying, with light and sandwiches and the promise of warmth in a restless waiting room.