Thirteen Ways of Looking at Twilight—7
Dreams within dreams.
A rainy night in Georgia. A bench in a bus station, buried in the endless night—the lonely rain outside patters the concrete, drips from the eaves. The spectral clock against the black sky offers no comment. Somewhere in the distance a moaning train carries the vision of its weary engineer, wanting only not to be creeping his way through the back yards of the world.
Weary of motion.
Beginning at the bench and radiating out, the loneliness is absolute; the cold—maybe from the absence of people, maybe the base condition of mere life. An uncertainty, straddling the line of consciousness, nags the sitter’s mind: is he waiting for the bus that hasn’t come, or did it drop him off hours ago and he still doesn’t know what to do?
He hopes the first—the thought of motion the only salvation he can muster.
A sound, and a flash of light—he looks out the smudged window as a pair of headlights appears, peeks into the heart of the room, then passes in a muffled rush.
* * *
Rain, endless rain—he is driving, and everything has mired into slow motion. A truck, going one mile an hour faster than another is overtaking him at the speed of a growing plant. He is stuck behind the lumbering road vegetable, and behind him the lights of a Lusitania-sized starship menace his mirror. He thinks, given the choice, he would kill the arrogance behind him first, and maybe forgive the truck driver who is, after all, just trying to get home. Finally the first truck clears the second, moves over, and he slides around him and moves over too. His betters from behind roar past—he glances and the middle-aged woman in the passenger seat gives him the finger. Another glance and the teenaged girl in the back with pink hair blows him a kiss and smiles . . .
* * *
Rain, always rain—middle of the night—he is driving again—eight hours on the road, three past his mortal limit, and he’s almost home. His impatience to be there has nudged him into carelessness. He creeps up behind a slightly slower car—who is he? where the hell is he going this time of night?—now I’m the asshole, he reflects, but he’s too tired to dwell on it. A straightaway with a hill ahead—he makes his move, pulls out—
The hill—blind hill—steeper and nearer than he thought—he’s halfway up it before he clears the car and moves over, heart pounding.
Did I do that?
Then as he keeps it floored, trying to put distance between himself and the vanquished car, he can’t help but imagine—what if? And sees the pair of oncoming headlights pop over the crest of the hill—and there’s only the sear of the sudden light and the panic of something happening too fast for him to react.
He swerves, the other car swerves—to the shrill accusation of a fierce horn, they miss each other, giving his nerves something eternal . . .
* * *
He is driving, driving late at night, in the rain—a pair of oncoming headlights threatens to, then does, appear over a hill . . .
He bolts awake, terrified, unable to escape the thought, maybe I didn’t imagine it, and he can’t find his footing in the layers of time. He prays for sleep but his mind is in no mood for unconsciousness and it takes the flash of light at least an hour to dim, and all he can remember is that he was driving—driving home—what is home? . . .
* * *
In a washed-out white room, on a bench, knowing something is missing, the rain, but the possibility of that lonely sound is choked by the deep silence.
What do the dead think of when they think of life? Smudges and smears, like fading dreams or memories, a niggling sensation that there was something meaningful about them somehow but no way to remember what? . . .
Is he that, or only thinking of that, cursing the sense of self that contaminates any scenario he can devise.
And what is this merciless anxiety—does anxiety follow the haggard soul down all the rivers of time? It had happened. But what was It? He only knew It was, as they say, sudden, and that something in him resists the inevitable. He could put it off for a long time. He could sit in this spiritual vacuum for a very long time, but the reckoning would come.
Not yet, but it would come.
There is no way of knowing if the thirst for redemption is a longing to fall asleep, or to awaken.
Unless they alternate, and, of course you never know which is which.
April 24, 2022