time is a train

The past two evenings my dreams have centered around trains. This is a bit unusual for me; I tend to associate trains with 5 year old boys and Some Like it Hot.

The first one was this epic fucking dream. The type that seems to last all night and run into the morning...I won't go into the entire dream, but this was the ending. (It revolves around my cousin J in Denver. J is 14 now, but was born with all these really bad physical and mental problems. He was so small as a kid and undernourished - he could never keep anything down. His parents had this thing they all called "tummy tube" put into his belly and they would hook him up to a machine which basically force fed him at night. Now he looks simultaneously very, very, young, and yet very, very old. He doesn't have much in the way of social skills, and physically his body is like an 8 year old. His parents, like most parents who have kids with disabilities, are divorced.) At the end of the dream, this train is coming through the city and then the city transforms into this wide open field. The tracks are there, gritty and burning with heat, and you can hear the train rumbling in the distance. J is in the dream, only he is not 13, he is 8 or 9 or 7. He goes running, running towards the tracks. He stands next to them, and bends over to take off his tennis shoes. He struggles with the laces on the first one before he lies next to him on the floor. The second he just kicks off of his heel with his bare foot's toes. He stands there for a moment, his hair gets caught in the light breeze, and fuck - he looks so happy. Happier than I have ever seen him in real life. The train comes into view , it's moving so fast. J moves and stands inside the tracks, facing them dead on. The conductor must see him because he starts to blast the horn. The train starts to squeal as though now the conductor is trying to break - but it's way to late. The train and J hit one another at the same moment. One another because J seems to lift, hit, and fly up - it's like he is diving into water only he flies upwards. He is dead, and moving, and smiling. The sun seems to glow through his skin...

I have never had a dream that this cousin was in ever before.

My dream last night centered around a different train. I was traveling through Asia in this packed train. It was snowing; feet of snow were piled up outside the windows. We kept getting snowed onto the track and getting stuck. I had all these boxes I had to move from the back to the front for some reason. It was incredibly hard to get done. I remember having to get off the train; I was going to miss my flight back to the states. I did end up missing my flight. I stood outside of the train with 3 of the boxes next to me. One broken from my aggressive pulling. I woke up.

In looking for interpretations of train dreams on the web, I find a limited few...

-Striving for wholeness.
-Vehicles of transportation signify many aspects of your attitude, state of awareness and willingness to be in charge of your life.
-"finding yourself" stage of life
- representation of time and opportunity
- It could symbolize a journey--a journey which may be symbolic itself, such as journeying into regions in the psyche that are unexplored or journeying into a new relationship. It could also point to a journey into a new facet of life, a new destiny.
-To see a train in your dream, represents conformity and go along with what everyone else is doing. You have the need to do things in an orderly and sequential manner. In particular, if you see a freight train, then it refers to the burdens and problems that you are hauling around.
-To dream that you are on a train, is symbolic of your life's journey and suggests that you are on the right track in life and headed for the right direction. Alternatively, you have a tendency to worry needlessly over a situation that will prove to work out in the end.
-To see or dream that you are in a train wreck, suggests chaos. The path to goals are not going according to the way you planned it out. Or you may be lacking self-confidence and having doubt in your ability to reach your goals.
-To dream that you are the engineer, signifies that you are in complete control of a particular situation in your waking life.
-To dream that you miss a train, denotes missed opportunities or nearly escaping your death.

So - one train which crashes into my cousin, and the other which I am kind of this train ridden Sisyphus. How bizarre.

The other day TB asked me if I was lonely before. It's strange - I mean, I hadn't thought about it in so long. I had to stop and reflect, and was like, "yah, I guess I was lonely." So, I was thinking about the times I remember feeling lonely. Some were the more obvious times like when I was sick, but what I kept thinking about were the times when I was with someone, and still felt lonely. I have felt lonelier being with more people in my life, than I have ever felt while being single.

It's like this presence that used to lurk in the background of my space. That's gone now. Damn beautiful thing too.

Have I mentioned lately that I am in love? I don't think I can say it enough...