You can make too much of metaphors, but railroad tracks have always provoked a strong response for me. People go places on trains. They get away, set out on adventures, sail off into the distance. They suggest freedom to me. The idea of freedom has changed for me in the last few years. I used to think it meant political freedom, and that is important, but I can’t bear to pay attention to politics any longer, as there is nothing there for me.

For me, the idea of freedom has become more personal, a different and contemporary kind of bill of rights. Freedom from fear. Freedom from medications and tests. Freedom from suffocating notions about aging. Freedom from drama, regret, self-pity. Freedom from warnings, anger, confrontation. Freedom from other people’s ideas about what I need to live, how much money I must have, what constitutes security. Freedom from banks and inhuman corporations. I do not wish to be a slave to these new ideas about life, because if you follow them, you cannot be free, or head off down those tracks.

When I see the sun glinting on those tracks, I pull over and take a deep breath and renew my own vows to be free. To use the life I have well. I’d love to be a patriot in that kind of nation.