Thursday, October 16, 2008

Train Hopping

I figured it out. I have been scratching my head trying to figure out how to describe the feeling I have right now, because it is the first time I have felt this way in this way. I think I may have felt this way many times before, but not been in touch enough with my feelings to know that I had them. And to be quite honest, I think I preferred not knowing the feelings to knowing them and feeling them so much. I have not train hopped--my friends have--but I haven't. But I have read Dharma Bums a hundred times, so I think I know what it must be like to train hop. I feel like I switched trains in an invigorating in motion leap. I feel like I headed a new direction, towards a different destiny. And now I feel like I jumped off the train at full-speed and hit the ground hard. I am bruised, disoriented, scared and lost. And I also feel like I keep trying to jump back on the first train and as I leap, I keep losing my grip and falling under the tracks. And I feel like I like being under the tracks better than riding on either train for now. And somehow I know I will probably end up walking, the long way, and maybe never reaching any destination. In grad school, Mary Hawkesworth talked about Heigel's interpretation of Geist--the notion that spirit moves you forward to your next evolution through a sense of dissatisfaction with your present context. She explained that is why we had applied to grad school--something told us to "be more." I feel that now. I just am afraid of what I will, or maybe more so, what I won't become.

1 comment:

c4hair said...

Train hopping is quite dangerous, but wow is it an amazing feeling when you hear and feel the vibrations of all that metal humming along the rails and you sit back and enjoy the view.

I've felt very endangered once while trying to hop freight from Salt Lake to Boise. Remember my story of Slim Jim and his drunk, veteran buddy with the gun in his bag? You just never know if a train will leave the station heading where you want to go or think you want to go, but in my view it doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get on a train at all.

Perhaps in the end, as it happened in my case trying to get to Boise, we can always catch a ride on the freeway with some young Mormon family and ride in comfort in a plush minivan.