First, a metaphor. “You’re twelve, with your best friend at an amusement park. Passes for the entire day, your birthday. From your iPhones, Androids, smart phones, the signal goes out, for many more than those on the list your parents got will be attending this Saturday afternoon gathering…A day of accelerated Gs, flast sceen TVs hung from rafters and tree-limbs- ubiquitous – making eye contact with members of the oppostie sex (or not) across three aisles of brass railed line leading to the Log Flume; soda, pizza, asphalt, sunlight, meticulously maintained birch and elm trees; off in the (not too much) distance the inevitable mini-locomotive blares “Whoo, whoo!” as it snakes around the park’s perimeter; coincidence or not it’s not until 3;16 (you remember as your smartphone is out) when you and train come into immediate proximity of one-another. Through the green iron railing you happen to be leaning against as you and your companions sip Cherry Icees deciding whether it’s The Octopus or Mindbender next when the train rounds a corner, enters the Square, across from you, circles the merry-go-round at center of the plaza, it’s slow lateral movement complementing the merry-go-round’s own counter-clockwise rotation and the rise and fall of its wooden menagerie. Passing before you you decide to play a game with the train’s passengers. You briefly lock eyes with whomever’s at the window of each of the passing cars car passes and that’s when you see Her/Him…face against the glass; peering, down, eyes meet yours, lock. Your heart races, some small but critical gear in your soul “clicks”, an almost alien joy; no: recognition. Memories flood through you; another place and time. An August afternoon at the end of a dock watching a massive steamboat, her stern wheel churning, slowly but inexorably pulling away. As the sun begins to set you take note of the handful of fireflies already evident around the trunks of weeping willows lining both riverbanks. From the upper viewing deck he/she looks down at you, hands gripping the railing. Though the eys look right into, they are at once infinitely distant; from them emanate a melancholy so great your soul recoils, as it does a voice at your ear whispers “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
The train moves on, you briefly consider hounding it but stop, look to your friends, already shuffling off for the Mindbender, up the arbor covered asphalt walk winding up, around, away. The train disappears. The train is gone. Your friends have disappeared around the bend. Gone.
Look back after the train.
Wake.
Sit up. clutch at your heart, or wring your hands, perhaps. Hug yourself.
You ever have a dream like that?
The Matrix is one of my favorite movies, as much for its screenplay as the finished