Listen to a Train Tract: "Jangles and Drums"

Listen to Marissa Bell Toffoli read one of her poems from Train Tracts, "Jangles and Drums."

Or hear it here: http://dublit.com/forward/emailref/2580

First Tracts Show!

This Friday and Saturday the tracts that have returned from their travels are going to be on display at Saltgrass Printmaking Studio in Salt Lake City for the Sugarhouse gallery stroll. There will be refreshments, two other printmaking shows, and Friday: there's gonna be a Bluegrass band. This will be a full-contact show-- you can pick up the tracts, find the little treasures tucked inside (train ticket stubs, letters, notes, and, actually a package of eyeglass lens cleaner. And more.) Check it out if you're in the area!

Friday: 5pm-10pm

Saturday: 1pm-5pm

for directions, etc: http://www.saltgrassprintmakers.org/

afternoon muleing about in sacramento

April 22, 2009

I figured I'd have to hit Sacramento. There is a big railroad museum there, and it is, after all, where the project all started with the Burning Hell. I went in the afternoon, just stopped by on my trip from Salt Lake to San Francisco, and dropped off a few of the tracts that I'd been holding back (I kept a few just in case their brethren didn't come back to us.) 

I ended up talking to four amazing people. I have to say: I'm so amazed at how easy it is to bond with complete strangers over art. I chatted with Luis for awhile inside, and then went outside and talked with a couple other people, and when I came back Luis had finished his track (it was How to Get Where You've Left, Mary Suddaby and Kelly Packer's tract) and he was like, "I love it! I mean I looove it! It's like, it's like, you're right there with her on the trip..." and we talked about art and writing and traveling for a bit longer before I continued on to San Francisco to meet up with some of the tract writers in a dive bar in Potrero Hill.

I was so happy.

Where are you guys? How was your trip?

tract movement update

they're on the move again. 

this weekend the tracts were dropped in Florida and Texas.

but who knows where they are by now...

Answers from Portugal by way of New Orleans

I've been traveling between Chicago and New Orleans, taking my time in Memphis, Clarksdale and Natchez too. My name is J. F., I was born in Portugal, and that's where I live.

It was on my way back from New Orleans to Chicago that I was given this book. I wondered what the purpose was and I still do, but I'm glad someone did it, as it made me think of what's this trip all about and what's the purpose of traveling. 

What first moved me into this trip, like the character in this chapter, was the need to find something, the need to find who's left and what's left of the landscape that created the Blues, those raw feelings put into words and music.

Mostly, it's not there anymore. You won't find any wise old man delivering himself in words and music, but I believe that when you search for something, even if you don't find it, you find something that has a lasting effect on you. 

You find how to enjoy your freedom in a way that really suits you, which is not as easy as it seems. You define yourself in the path you choose and in the moment you decide it's time to leave. 

I could fly from New Orleans to Chicago, but that feels more like time traveling. I need to feel the gap between places and there's something about long distance trips aboard a train. It's not comfort, as your body struggles to find it in an ice cold environment. It's a soothing effect, to know that among all the decisions you need to make, you are now on rails, there's no way you can get lost. You also won't have a flat tire.

August 28th, 2008

-J.F.

The First Mystery

This tract was mailed back from Seattle. The train-riding author covered her tract in poetry, thoughts, and snippets of conversation, including this:

"friends are like stars, although they aren't every day visible, they are still there"

and

"she said to me that she is crying almost every day... not because she is depressive or sick and tired of life, but she loves every single day and is afraid of dying too quickly"

I opened the tract with Davina Pallone, the artist who designed this tract (there are five editions-- she used paper that she made from actual plants as part of the design.) We were totally giddy looking over the comments. Marissa Bell Toffoli is the author of the poems in this tract, but lives in San Francisco, and hasn't gotten to see the finished tract yet. 

stuffed full of mysteries

I was so nervous to go to the P.O Box and look. I put it off for a couple weeks after the deadline-- because, what if no one sent their tract back?

But when I got there, the box was stuffed full of them.

-Amie