Daydream #9

Each morning the northbound train carries an icy wind that cuts through my jacket and creeps up my pant legs and, as it leaves the tunnel my train arrives heading south along the tracks toward the City. We all know each other in way, standing in our rows each morning awaiting the same car and seat that takes us to an office somewhere. This is our routine- safety in the familiar; days bleed together. We don't talk, sometimes there's a nod. Many have their hands on devices, heads bent to a small screen, scrolling documents, social networking, who knows. Others thumb through the morning paper, middle-aged women proudly hold novels with rippling bare-chested men on the covers, lavender-colored with flowers and horses and rapturous looks. Others nod off with sorrow straining the lines aside their mouths, over-worked and underpaid, and as they fall asleep their faces relax and for a while they look peaceful.

I hide my eyes with sunglasses, turning away from the florescent overheads, and bury myself in other people's stories. And sometimes when I'm especially drawn I warp forward ten stops and nearly miss my station, wondering where the time went, where my sense of presence went. I was told that it's a form of self-induced hypnosis, when we lose ourselves in essentially non-thought. I like it, it feels restful and calm and I always wish to have stayed longer there.

These days I want to be a cowboy in Wyoming with rough-calloused hands and simple desires. I imagine a stretch of land, a small garden, and a few modest buildings that all need occasional tending. A fence needing mending or perhaps an old line of fence that needs removing to clear the corridor for the winter elk coming down from the surrounding peaks. Maybe there'll be a train there too, not so far away calling in the distance, not carrying these businessmen and women or semi-professional like me, but instead wood or coal, machinery, food. Everyone loves the sound of a train... I think you could say that, except perhaps the wildlife probably scared shitless somewhere in a hole. And then maybe a rocky stream with deep pools for fish and swimming. Yeah, that'd be good. I wonder if I could be happy with just greens and golds and square-dance swinging cowgirls on Friday nights at the grange. Everything, domestic. I'd like to think so, but I have to get to work now.