A boy draped a tree branch over a puddle of water formed by the railroad tracks

Boy sitting next to a puddle of water — Boy hanging by a thread in a puddle of water

I was walking right next to the railroad tracks. This track is where the Tanjung Priok line of the KRL commuter line, which starts from Jakarta Kota station, runs. It is one of the commuter lines in the Jakarta metropolitan area. However, even when I walked along the side of the tracks, I never saw a train running by. Perhaps because it is a commuter train, it runs only in the morning and evening, not in the afternoon when I was walking. There was so little sign of a train coming that I was tempted to put my ear to the tracks like in "Stand By Me" to see if there was a train approaching from afar, even if I couldn't see it.

Not only were there houses right next to the tracks, but there was no fence between the houses and the tracks. The boundary between the "space leading to somewhere other than here" where the train runs and the "here" where daily life is conducted is vague. But that doesn't mean I can't take the train from this place, which is neither a station nor anything else. The train just runs violently through the "here" where daily life is carried out.

As I trudged along the side of the tracks, I saw a puddle of water and a boy sitting next to it. He was holding a branch in his hand as if he was fishing, and the end of the branch was hanging down to the water surface. Perhaps he was thinking about something, but he just sat there with his eyes closed.

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