Pretend You Are On a Train...

Pretend you are on a train that you believe is going to a destination you know fairly well. The train seems to be going faster and faster as you near your destination, as though the goal was a cosmic magnet pulling you toward it. While the train moves in what seems to be a forward motion, you are busy absorbed in the comfort of your private envelope of Self, and you hear snatches of conversation between a man and a woman.

The man seems to be doing most of the talking and you try to crawl back into your envelope, but, against your will, you continue to notice words and phrases that inform you of another envelope, split open, revealing tidbits of ordinary lives, not your own -- lives which are like aimless shooting stars that streak across the horizon and are quickly extinguished by our dear planet's atmosphere.

You wish for total privacy, for you cannot shut out completely the overheard conversation, nor can you tell your ears not to listen, at times enticed to hear more, at times annoyed and determined to ignore.

That's okay. It is a long trip and one needs diversions, like salted peanuts, to interrupt the soft drone of lulling repetition. You turn around to locate the source of the conversation and you see a man talking to a pretty young woman sitting next to him, who may or may not be a traveling companion.

The man, distinguished only by his lack of distinct features, could, for all practical purposes, be talking to himself, not a misdemeanor but certainly against the mores of our dunned-down civilization. You ask yourself, why can't he be self-absorbed like me? Why can't he remain silent in the face of our communal fate? Let us all go together, as loyal subjects of the universal honcho, and, for his sake, without whining.

Now, at last, you are saved by the white-jacketed attendant, who has brought you a teeny cup of peanuts in the expectation that you will purchase a few expensive sips of fermented grain to quench your thirst, and, joyfully, a complimentary set of earplugs. Now, you can reenter you cozy envelope at will, and...

Now, pretend you are in a highly unusual dream which makes you uncomfortable and you're haphazardly searching for an exit which you suddenly locate but then it moves away as you come closer to it, it continues to move away, like Doppler sound waves.
(to be continued)