An American Dream, Inspired by Hydrogen Jukebox

Every time I board this train, I wonder if this ticket to ride will include a sidecar of derailment. I wander down the narrow aisle to my window seat and settle in for another red-eye. Slowly, steadily, the view outside shifts from dull grey concrete moorings to twilightime boiling with ominous, mushroom-like clouds portending another clamorous nightmarish trek. 

Sheet lightning, my heart races at seeing the nocturnal emission. This one will be different, already eventful. Scanning the open coach, I wonder, who do we have with us tonight? Patriots in official camo making their way home? To work? We all witnessed the same atmospheric fireworks show. I imagine the fireworks that must lay in store for at least some of these stoic fatigued while collecting a paycheck from the rest of us.

Are their future enemy combatants also traveling under gloomy skies tonight? Are both battalions praying to their gods for salvation while the gods themselves aim ordnances and plot each other's fiery end? Such bitterness. Frustration. Reagan sent me here. Gingrich sent me here. Limbaugh sent me here. The Turtle sent me here. Justice and unrestrained law enforcement sent me here. Putin sent me here. 

How long is this war going to drag on? When will we no longer need the innumerable services of these brave employees? Wouldn't it be great if Lester Holt had nothing but a long list of human interest stories to read each night instead of the nightmare fuel he currently leads with week after week? Dream on.

I close my eyes and try to shift my attitude. My thoughts drift to a social media post I scrolled through in the train station, one of those memory posts from a close friend recalling a romantic evening in a foreign country with a former lover. My heart swells with compassion for my friend's experiences, shared so honestly and warmly. Absorbed, his memory is now also mine.

I'm startled out of my reverie by the alarm bells and bright red warning lights of a railroad crossing gate. Trains have their charms, but on nights like these, I long for a quieter mode of transportation. I can usually maintain dream sleep on a plane, capitalizing on frequent flyer rewards across flyover country, such a harmful turn of phrase. I think of how many inhabitants of the tall gleaming metallic spires would rather live smog-free in spacious green, all things equal. All those people, drawing clean breaths, but for the sulfur spewing oil wells, in flyover country.

I have driven across the width of the nation many times. You can't sleep, read or otherwise tune out when traveling under your own steering. Places are seen. People are seen. The interstate highway system is a great equalizer. Buddhist Tesla drivers, Hindu Greyhound passengers, Christian-driven horse trailers, and Muslims in limousines - all sharing the same networks. Rest areas are vortices of potential community. Unfortunately, a stop for tea and gas is often full of heads held down, eyes avoiding contact, each minding their own business, meditating alone in togetherness. Like many, I'm often a stranger in my country, alienated most of the time, a refugee from an imaginary fable.

Must it require catastrophe for this alien nation to drop its pretense and acknowledge its commonality? Anger begins to swell as I check off all the ways we sell ourselves to evil's minions: unobtainable wealth, war, power generation. When you protest in the streets against such corruption, those who have it, who wage it, or willingly trade in it will not only turn away but actively fight to discredit you. Howl! 

Wilderness beckons, but not even an open canopy of stars and galaxies can soothe my soul at times like these. I fasten my seat belt for what will apparently be a bumpy night. I dream of places I have holed up during bouts of despair, cities halfway across the country driven to so I could find community and peace. Enlightenment was never found.

728 migrant deaths last year at the southern border in America. 

25,000 civilians killed in Ukraine so far.

45,000 deaths by gun violence per year, on average, in America

1,000,000 COVID-related deaths in America.

I dream of my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. They seemed happier, even though, by most measures, life was more challenging and more violent across the world during their lives. We liken today's despots to Hitler, but only Hitler was Hitler. How would we respond to an event the size and scope of WWII? Putin's relatively minor transgressions couldn't hold our country together for more than a few news cycles. Before too long, we're back to blaming Biden for everything from supply chain problems with baby formula to high gas prices. With Putin placing embargoes on Ukrainian wheat, somehow Biden is responsible for higher prices at the HEB?! Did our great grandparents also make such patently ridiculous political assertions?

I'm stirred awake by my phone yet again. It's called Do Not Disturb! Sigh. Another memory on another social media platform from another old friend swimming in nostalgia. I'm vicariously experiencing a road trip shared by a couple of vibrant young lovers. Sprawling landscape photos of the Rocky Mountains and lush forests, America's best side, are captured by an artistic eye. Their vision for the topography is matched only by their vision for each other. Maybe this confessional posting habit we all have these days isn't all bad.

Suddenly, I get a BREAKING NEWS notification from The New York Times. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade. Women's rights have been set back 50 years, and the Conservative majority on the court is just getting warmed up. BREAKING NEWS. A conspiracy was at play during the January 6th assault on the Capital. Sure, Republican malfeasance goes way back: Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the adjacent War on Drugs, but this time the chemists mixed mass violence with their wrongdoing. This cocktail is what turns a Dope Calypso into a Civil War Dance. The apocalypse is right around the corner.

Restless REM sleep. I'm at a baseball game. Hot Dogs. Cold beer. 110 degrees outside, but the roof is closed, and I'm enjoying perfect 72-degree weather while more and more refrigerant propels skyward. That's where India went off the rails. They didn't build large enough cooling centers to watch cricket. Suddenly, the fans turn off. An EMP has detonated, killing all electrical power. No lights. It's 2 Outs, Bottom of the 9th, and things are getting tense. Panic sets in as we all somehow manage to get out of the stadium alive, only to realize that our cars won't start and we will all have to walk home in 110-degree heat. The city's water pumps stop working without power, and the drinking fountains go dry. That's when the shooting starts from our open-carry companions, looting stores searching for bottled water. It doesn't last much longer than that. 

"When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end."

The train has stopped, and it's time to move on. Endings are part of the natural order of things. Without them, life has very little meaning. Evolution teaches us that life goes on and is improved through death. While I may despair about the nation's state in the short term, death reminds me that impermanence is a good thing, a happy thing. All is changing, and while good doesn't last too long, neither does terrible. I find comfort and hope in this for America and her children.