Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Train Trestle, Train Trestle To the tune of an old Nick Cave song,              Some would say you block the view  of nature, of the sky, of the dirty, old  dumpster behind Lakeview Resort. I love your economy and utility. The nature lover in me dismisses  your role in bringing belching  smoke to the heartland.  Yet the romantic in me is  enamored with travel. Like most Americans, I  respect the promise of  coast to coast travel  that you exemplify. Dark metal and creosote wood bisecting nature. Green grass peeks from under  the wood of your tracks. The foliage will take back the land, but you will still peek from  beneath its lush carpet. Nature and commerce be damned. We all have a job to do. 

"One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." --Henry Miller. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957). "I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore." -- Cheryl Strayed. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar (2012). We just moved to Arkansas so I could start my new teaching job, loading our belongings into a car and a 26-foot truck, trying against all odds to get rid of junk to make the move easier. While I did get rid of books and other nonessential items, the truck was packed (to the gills as the expression goes). I know, first world problems, right? There was barely room for anything else, and when we arrived in Arkansas there were a few damaged items. I...