Lost

I stood there, incredulous. A low, throaty tone from the train whistle intermittently reached back to the depot platform.  Watching the red lamp on the last car of the Southwest Chief rolling through the misty twilight of pre-darkness, my chin dropped to my chest.  The train was soon invisible as it sped west toward the remnants of orange cast by the setting sun in its last gasp of day.  My wife was on that train.  I was supposed to be on it too.

There is no defense for having missed the re-boarding call.  Conductors called out “all aboard” in the well hewn style that rises above the din and chatter of potential passengers and departing patrons.  The locomotive whistle blew its three short blasts and repeated its piercing call at least three times.   Anyone with a modicum of awareness knew that it was time to board, time to depart, time to rejoin loved ones waiting in their seat or compartment.  I missed it all.

I grabbed my left rear pocket to get my phone.  It wasn’t there.  My cell phone must have remained on the seat my formless apparition riding west into the night.  I wondered what she wondered or just how worried she would be.  If she tried to call me, my phone would vibrate the seat beside her.  It would offer to take a message and my detached voice would wish her a good day. 

Panic is not pleasant.  My face contracted into and intense scowl and the sweat and dizzy head took over.   I looked for a pay phone for several minutes only to remember that pay phones have joined the buggy whip as quaint historical Americana.  I asked passersby to lend me their phones but received icy stares from sometimes fearful eyes.  People avoided me like I was a panhandler sizing up my marks – why would that be?  The ticket window had closed and the only employees who remained were the janitor and a repairman replacing light bulbs high in the waiting room bay.  Neither had a cell phone nor a sympathetic word to share. 

Lost.  Feeling lost and totally disoriented led to nervous tics and profuse sweating like an addict in the final stage of withdrawal.  This was a complete loss of control; all caused because I had gotten lost in a book while the locomotive whistle blew and the conductors called.  My head was down.  I began to walk without knowing where to go.   I must have begun muttering when I felt two strong hands grab my shoulders.  I was being lifted right off the sidewalk and rudely shaken. 

That’s when I woke, startled and wide-eyed. Looking around with trepidation, I was in my bed, the lamp still lit, a book splayed open upon my chest, and, the shallow restful breathing of my wife did not break stride as she slept beside me.

I’m told that we are the authors of our own dreams.  We cast the characters, set the stage, and write the plot with the subconscious images stored somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds.  But why do we write what we write?

Everyone dreams but not everyone remembers their dreams.  Few if any remember all of the details that make your closed eyes move rapidly behind closed lids when they’re sheltered from physical reality during sleep.  But dreams remembered feel real enough to touch the people, see the scene and smell the scents that characterize the alternate world you created.  We create these alternate worlds.

When I woke, I felt deeply grateful that I was not lost nor had I abandoned my bride.  I got up to read the paper and was greeted with an eye-opening headline. 

The stories led with another day of conjecture about how the antagonists inside the Beltway were going to find their way out of the maze they created; how they would save face in the process.  Since the earliest days of our republic, politics has been contentious – that is the essential nature of politics.  Disagreement between parties and candidates is the cauldron where turmoil and passion should boil up the compromise or consensus that is the essence of self-governance.  Today the process might as well be a sporting event where the only thing that seems to matter is winning or losing, hauling the wounded out of the game on a gurney and chasing the MVP trophy. 

They are lost.  They are confined in a dream world that looks like it was created in their sleep.  The rising volume of the hate speech exposes their fear.  They are sweating and desperate.  If they look into the eyes of passers-by, they see that fear is spreading and contempt is growing.  They have forgotten passengers on the train; they have left the train without an engineer.   Makes me wish that one of them would awaken and grab the others, one by one, hold their shoulders and shake them awake.

A nightmare is a dream of being lost.

--td