Personal Reflections
I appreciate the way this picture captures the absurdity of American life, with its competing pulls toward material prosperity and spiritual (or aesthetic) peace (it is clear which is primary). Put in another setting, perhaps with an abundance of trees scattering the glittering sun, hedged by bushes and water, the house would be beautiful. In that way, it could even feel like a home, at least for a time. But this is no home. The blind judgments of material prosperity have either put the track near the home or the home near the track; no sensible person would have done either. It makes me think of Tolkien’s horror in “The Scouring of the Shire” (The Return of the King) that anyone would fashion a house to make money. But here the house stands with stark naked sunlight blasting the mostly shut shades. It cuts hard lines out of soft aesthetic curves. It makes me wonder which would be worse in the morning, the sunlight or the morning train? The only real sign of life in the picture is that obviously the tracks and the house were both designed, but, absurdly, both for utility.