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| Photo is the Blue Train South Africa |
Lately during my meditation/journeys I have found myself on
a train. Not a bullet train or even
modern Amtrak trains, but a 1940’s passenger train. I blame the continuous loop of White
Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life for part of this. At this time of year, I fall deeply and madly
in love with both Jimmy Stewart and Bing Crosby. Sigh…..
Back to the train thing.
I almost always find myself in the club car surrounded by interesting
people of all sorts dressed in 1940’s clothing, sipping martinis and manhattans. The only thing absent is the smoking. The club car is a roving erudite party. Gandhi gives haircare advice to Jack Sparrow. Kerouac paces the length of the car reciting
obscenely fine poetry. Barbra McClintock
sitting in the corner with Stephen King telling him stories about jumping
genes. Thomas Jefferson chats up
Kandinsky regarding color. My friends
are there too. Fabeku is wearing a fantastic zoot suit and holding court in the spacious corner booth with Joey and Gaga like always. Sherry is dancing atop a table for her Hump Island faves. My forever small group has invoked the cone of silence to assure privacy. Sno' is discussing treasure hiding strategies with Blackbeard (who looks an awful lot like Keith Richards in PoC). The low thrum of
conversation and the rhythm of the wheels is exciting. Sometimes there is a loud guffawing from one
group or another that rises above it all.
In that moment, people stop, smile and then it collapses back into that steady exhilarating thrum. The train rarely stops, but when it does
people exit and enter with little fanfare. daVinci and Marilyn get off, MLK and Eminem
get on. So it goes.
I stand there pondering the new passengers, wondering why
the old ones left, where they have gone and why. Kerouac sees me noticing, stops pacing for a
moment as he leans over and whispers “We all get where we need to go on this
train.” Then he resumes his pacing and
poetry.
I am going through what appears to be another purge cycle in
my life. The last one happened about 12
years ago. I quit drinking, lost all my
friends, spent some time feeling really really sorry for myself for what I lost. When I finally stopped that silliness, I met
an amazing person in that empty space I had created. I met ME.
Things only got better from there.
So once again habits, friends, family members, projects I
once loved are disembarking from my club car.
I can’t get too caught up in the why of it. People get what they need from a relationship
or they don’t. They move on for reasons
wholly their own that have little to do with me. There is no hard feeling in this, in fact
there is quite a bit of love toward them, and I have learned that the little
achy place their absence creates will soon be filled with something/someone
else if I let it. If I obsess about it
then not only does the new thing not come in, but I tie this person or thing to
myself that wants/needs to move on. That’s
an energetic booboo that will need fixed later on.
Many friends have ducked out. I feel like a move is coming, even though
that is the LAST thing I want to do. The
poetry book stalled out and like Icarus seems doomed to crash and burn on
melted wings. I keep hoping for a
reprieve. But then Kerouac slips his arm around me and whispers in my ear “Does it matter?” and I know that it doesn’t – not really - and that someday soon, this disjointedness will feel as comforting as the rocking train motion in my club car.
Now, excuse me while I slip into something slinky, silken and
white. I see Bing and Jimmy sitting in a
booth waiting on me.
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