Hot steel, rattling—
two strangers ride the morning, pages open slow
The day had the sticky heaviness of an August afternoon, though it was only May. I could feel the weight of the heat pressing on my forehead as I stepped out of the theater in St. Gallen. The last threads of a velvet curtain had snagged my sleeve; my hands smelled faintly of glue and dust. My friend, Marlene, was somewhere inside, still arguing with the director about a collar that was, in her words, “historically accurate, but emotionally absurd.”
She’d left me a heap of costumes to bring back to Basel. A fox mask with a broken ear. A box of ancient shoes. Two black bags bursting with rough linen and the memory of last night’s sweat. I didn’t complain. Carrying someone else’s burden sometimes feels like the most honest thing you can do.
The walk to the train station was short, but long enough for the sweat to gather at my collar and for my thoughts to unravel into their usual knots. St. Gallen’s old city was nearly empty at this hour—just a thin gray cat winding between bicycle racks, and the sun smudging the edges of every shadow.
The SBB train was waiting, humming with impatience. I found a seat by the window in a half-full carriage, wedged the costumes awkwardly into the overhead rack, and collapsed against the faded upholstery. For a moment, I thought about reading. I pulled a paperback from my bag—Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the Swiss edition, a battered copy I’d found at a flea market in Bern. Its corners were soft, the spine broken in two places. I opened to a page at random, just to anchor myself. The train lurched forward.
Across from me, two men were already deep in conversation, though their voices were low, casual. The one nearest the window wore pressed trousers and a thin blue shirt, sleeves rolled, hair combed neatly back. His shoes were the kind you buy when you want to look comfortable and wealthy at the same time. The other man—slighter, hair unruly, with a rucksack at his feet—was fidgeting with the edge of his seat.
I pretended to read. But their conversation, at first just a hum, soon began to settle into the rhythm of my own thoughts.
“I always thought mornings were meant to be productive,” the anxious one said. “Make a list, get ahead, check things off.”
The calm man sipped from a water bottle. “You can start that way. But it doesn’t last. The day always finds a way to take what you give it. I prefer to begin with nothing.”
“Nothing?”
He nodded, looking past his own reflection into the blur of green fields. “Nothing but sitting. Maybe some tea. I don’t let my mind wander too far. I try not to think of work. I just… let myself be in the room. Sometimes I close my eyes. Sometimes I just watch the light come up the wall.”
The anxious one glanced at his phone, as if it were a lifeline. “Don’t you feel like you’re wasting time? There’s always something I could be doing.”
The calm man shrugged. “Time isn’t lost if you’re living inside it.”
A pause, heavy as a held breath. I found myself rereading the same paragraph, the words slipping out of meaning and into the background music of the carriage:
Even the deepest sleep isn’t perfect. The heart keeps watch. And in the world behind your eyes, the light never really goes out.
I wondered if the calm man would say something about meditation, or breathing, or the kind of spiritual discipline you hear about from people who grew up in old houses with thick walls and too many clocks. But he just smiled, hands folded in his lap.
“When I was younger,” he said, “I tried to win every morning. I’d rush, fill it with emails, calls, messages—try to trick myself into feeling accomplished. But the more I did, the emptier the day felt by the end.”
The anxious one sighed. “Sometimes I feel like the only time I’m really myself is when I’m too tired to care what comes next.”
A woman in a red coat passed through the carriage, collecting trash. The anxious man tossed his coffee cup into her bag with a muttered apology. The train rattled through a tunnel, and the world outside became a flickering film of black and gold.
I turned a page, but found myself drifting back into their orbit.
“So what do you do, really?” the anxious one asked.
“I teach. Literature. I used to think the point was to fill the students with facts. Now I just try to get them to read, really read, for half an hour a day.”
The anxious man frowned. “Half an hour doesn’t seem like much.”
“It’s enough, if it’s real. Most people go their whole lives without ever giving a single moment their full attention. Half an hour is a lifetime if you do it right.”
A silence settled. I thought of the book in my hand, of all the mornings I’d promised myself I’d read before the day took over, and how often I’d failed. The page before me was full of crows and a locked gate. I closed it softly.
The fields outside had turned to forest. The sun was dipping, yellow and hot. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck. I watched as the anxious man, almost unconsciously, reached into his own bag and pulled out a slim volume—Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. He held it as if it might vanish if he let go.
The teacher noticed, but said nothing for a while.
The train slowed. Cows grazed near a low wall. A pond flashed silver in the heat.
“You know,” the teacher said, “the happiest people I know all have a habit that’s only theirs. A thing they do, no matter what the world asks of them.”
“Like your mornings?”
“Like my mornings,” he agreed. “But it could be anything. Some people run. Some people cook. Some people walk until their shoes fall apart. The important thing is that it’s not for anyone else. It’s a place where you can remember who you are, before the day tells you who to be.”
The anxious man looked at the book in his hands, then back at the window. “I used to write letters to myself. Stopped when life got too busy.”
The teacher nodded. “Maybe it’s time to start again.”
The conversation slipped back into silence. The anxious man began to read. I watched as the words softened his face, the tightness leaving his jaw, his breath deepening. The teacher gazed out at the fields, the shadow of a smile on his lips.
I closed my own book and just watched the world slip by, for once not worried about what came next.
The train swayed, rocking us back into ourselves. For a while, the teacher and his companion fell quiet—one reading, the other simply watching the sun’s slow descent through the leaves. I pressed my shoulder against the window, let the city of St. Gallen recede, and focused on the present: the faint tang of sweat from my collar, the soft scratch of a pencil as the anxious man underlined a phrase, the hum of air conditioning struggling against the heat.
I tried to summon the patience to read again, but the words on the page seemed to belong to a different afternoon, a cooler one, where the world was less insistent. Instead, I let myself drift, as if I, too, were one of those Murakami characters: observer, drifter, somehow present but not quite anchored.
A memory surfaced, unexpected. I was a child again, lying in the back garden of my family’s house in Slovenia, summer sun soaking into my skin, listening to my mother moving quietly in the kitchen. I remembered the way she would pause at the window every morning, just watching the sparrows fight over crumbs on the terrace. She never rushed that moment, never apologized for it. It was hers, untranslatable, ordinary and holy at once.
Back on the train, the anxious man shut his book, holding it in his lap. He tapped the cover with a thoughtful finger.
“You ever feel like everything’s waiting for you to move, but you’d rather just… not?” he asked, not exactly to the teacher, not exactly to anyone.
The teacher smiled, lines creasing around his mouth. “Sometimes the world wants you to keep moving because it’s afraid you’ll see how little you actually need to do.”
The anxious man glanced sideways. “And you really just… sit? Every day?”
“Every day I can. Some mornings, the habit gets away from me. The noise wins. But I always come back. It’s like a promise you make to yourself—one you keep or break, but it’s yours.”
The anxious man looked as if he might laugh or cry. “I used to think happiness would come if I worked harder, set more goals. But every time I got close to something, the goal would move. The satisfaction always slipped away.”
The teacher nodded, as if he’d heard this before, from students, friends, perhaps even himself. “The trick is not to chase the goal, but to chase the habit. Build the thing that brings you quiet, then let the rest sort itself out.”
The train rolled through another small station—Wil, maybe, or Uzwil—where a couple with backpacks hurried onto the platform, already late for something. The teacher watched them through the window, then turned back.
“You know,” he said, “I didn’t always have this. There was a time when my mornings belonged to everyone but me—school, emails, phone calls, all the little fires that needed putting out. I was good at it, too. Efficient. But every day felt thinner, like I was trading something precious for something urgent.”
He paused, finding the words. “I started waking up earlier, just to steal back ten minutes. That was all I could manage. At first, I was just tired. But eventually, it became easier. I started to look forward to it. Sometimes, I’d just listen to the birds. Sometimes, I’d write a single sentence in a notebook. Sometimes, nothing at all.”
The anxious man smiled. “Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes is a lifetime if you’re really present.”
The teacher glanced at the book in the other man’s lap. “What did you underline?”
A flush of embarrassment, but he opened the book, reading aloud softly:
“The only journey is the one within.”
The teacher nodded. “That’s the habit. That’s all any of us really have.”
The train’s rhythm smoothed out. Light flickered across the ceiling, the world outside blurring as fields gave way to the first hints of Zurich’s outer neighborhoods.
The anxious man tucked the book away, as if he’d made some small, private decision. “Maybe I’ll try it tomorrow,” he said. “Sit. Not for the news. Not for anyone. Just to see what’s left when everything else falls away.”
The teacher’s eyes warmed. “That’s the beginning of every good thing.”
They lapsed into silence, but it was different now—softer, more generous. I found myself wanting to thank them, though I had no part in the conversation, only the privilege of listening in. Outside, the sky had gone lavender, and in the distance, church bells counted out the hour.
Later, as we neared Basel, the two men gathered their things, exchanged a quiet handshake—strangers who might never meet again, but who had shared something all the same. The anxious man walked a little lighter, as if the weight of his thoughts had lessened just enough to notice.
I stood on the platform, costumes heavy in my arms, and watched the crowds dissolve into the city. I wondered what small habit I would claim for myself, what piece of the day I might save from the rush, what joy might grow if I gave it room.
And as I walked home beneath the pale lights, I resolved to try—tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. Just a little time, just for myself, to see what emerges in the quiet.
Basel at night is a different kind of city. The river softens its edges. Streetlights glimmer off cobblestones, painting the old facades gold and green. Even the trams move slower, wheels whispering in a language only they remember.
As I walked home, the costumes on my shoulder no lighter but somehow easier to bear, I kept thinking about those ten minutes. What would I find, sitting with my own silence? Would my mind settle, or would it scatter—restless as a swallow at dusk?
A light summer rain began to fall—almost invisible, soft as mist—spattering my glasses, making halos of every lamp. I let myself get a little wet, didn’t hurry. I remembered Marlene’s laugh in the theater, the way she could hold two needles and a cigarette in one hand, all the while singing out-of-tune. I remembered mornings in childhood, lying in bed long after I woke, half-listening to my parents move through the kitchen, the house slowly filling with the smell of coffee and bread.
It struck me that joy is rarely found in the grand gestures—the wild adventure, the perfect plan. More often it’s in the pauses, the unclaimed minutes, the habits we make without realizing: the first sip of coffee, the quiet moment before the world rushes in, the act of carrying something for someone else.
When I reached my apartment, I put the costumes on the floor and sat by the window. The city glowed below, unknowable, full of strangers and stories and small routines. I set my phone aside, closed my eyes, and let the sounds of Basel drift up—a river, a tram, a distant bell.
I tried to do nothing. Not for productivity. Not to be better. Just to see what might bloom in the quiet. Ten minutes. No more, no less.
Later, I wrote in my notebook, the page still warm from my hand:
All the real benefits in life come from compound interest—money, relationships, habits… even self-reflection.
Tomorrow, I’ll try again.
And so might you.
If you find yourself chasing the day, try saving just a piece of it for yourself. You might be surprised by what comes to meet you in the stillness. If this resonates, subscribe. We’ll keep searching together—one small habit at a time.
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