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Pandora

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Olvar Wood Writers Retreat

 
 

The Railway Table Chronicles, Part One

by Carla Billinghurst
 

Eudlo Railway StationI can't remember when this all began.  I have been a train commuter for years and one day a table appeared in the Waiting Room at Blackheath Railway Station; it had magazines on it. Over the next few weeks, the magazines began to diversify. People were taking a copy of New Idea or Home and Garden and leaving copies of the London Review of Books or The English Country House. There must have been a day, probably a misty rainy day because this is Blackheath, when someone left The First Book. There it lay in the centre of the table, surrounded by magazines. We will never know what it was or who left it there.  Was it left by some tired commuter who finished the last chapter waiting for a late train and decided it was too heavy to carry all the way to work and then home again?  Or was there something more deliberate at work, someone wanting commuters to read something more meaty, less rustly than magazines?  That part of the story is shrouded in delicious mystery, just as we will never know who picked up that book; took it with them to read on the train and then brought it back!

Ever since then I have been a happy user of the Railway Table. I probably contribute half a dozen books a week and take away about the same number. Once I took a book for a ride to Sydney, finished it by Blacktown and gave it to the woman next to me who was tired and needed something to relax her.  I joke that the table guides my reading: Henry James, Audrey Niffenegger, Ovid, and, yes alright, an endless stream of silly romances and spy stories! But local history turns up there as well as philosophical treatises on ecology, books about design, books about patchwork, books about books.  There is a community of users who never meet or talk.  As a formal system, this is a near-perfect example of emergence: from chaos and anarchy, a few simple rules create a complex and meaningful exchange.  There is just a table and shared desire and generosity of spirit. It takes and offers nothing but stories. And we bring them back.

Next Issue: Control in Emergent Systems.

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About the Author

Carla Billinghurst is the reviews editor for Perilous Adventures.

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