The train sped quietly through the Spanish countryside. It was early morning, and the farmland around us was just beginning to stir. The sun had found a foothold and was about to breach the horizon, its first rays creeping across the land to the left of the tracks. But the land to the right was still dark.

It was there that a solitary truck was making its way along a dusky road between two farm plots. Neither large nor small and lacking any markings on its silvery body, it seemed the type of vehicle that might be used to ferry produce to market. I could barely make out the profile of the driver, but I imagined that one of those fertile planting grounds might be his. I began to think about his story, his life, his work, his play, his day, his week, his year. It was all unknowable to me, every bit of it, but I knew it was part of at least one of the multitude of interconnected cycles that comprise life........

© Newsday