long live the king
(the weekend short story version)
It was a small speck, disappearing somewhere close to the horizon, where the wavering veil of heat up from the earth and the ambience of distant clouds met, crowding out what was previously visible.
It punctuated one of those meaningful events in life but took less than two minutes to bless this life of mine. Please, allow me to explain. It was the evening of the day before. I had been hitchhiking most of the day, west to east, across Canadian highway One. This particular day was the end of another ride that went too far into the darkness of the day. I couldn't stop the ride before sunset and just get out in the middle of nowhere and feel good about my circumstances. No, I had to play it out, knowing full well that this ride would dump me somewhere in the middle of some new town with a poetic name, like Moose Jaw or Swift Current or Red Feather, but I didn't know which, since the last map-time I had was now a few days back in the past and a three day total of people-time had mostly replaced the memory of towns to highways.
As a hitchhiker, I had two strong views about my rides: either they were complete idiots for picking me up, given my looks and my vibe or this was really cosmic and there is divinity in all actions. This ride, in general, felt of the former. In rides of the first nature, there is usually casual conversation that fills the space with stories and surmise unless they, as the driver in charge, have an axe to grind, which is oftentimes the case. They feel in control and have needs to unload on someone, whether that listener is of a compassionate nature or not. Generally I can accommodate. In rides of the second version, vibes take over. Conversation catches more the wind of the beings in them. People of this spirit would eventually go out of their way to provide and support. These people, for me, were always unexpected angels and unaware messengers in some way.
But back to the event at hand. So there I am, blam-splat but grateful, leaving a warm seat out into the cool night of a town, well past its normal closing hour. Except for bars and maybe a fast food place, there is nothing of interest for me. Food or beer was not my concern but rest was. However I had repeatedly learned as most recently as earlier that week, not to sleep in small town settings. Reasons, you want some reasons? Well, first there were in-house or in-yard dogs who thought me quite out of the ordinary and let me and those near by know about it; then there were loose dogs who spoke less but bothered me more with their presence in the end; then there were always the visual mazes composed of light and shade areas set against houses and yards to ponder for out of sight safety during a night's sleep; then an occasional local late-nighter catching a glance out their window followed by a quick call and an eventual half hour of flashing red or blue lights filled with stupid questions and the chemical hassle to my body, adrenal and whatnot; then there were always the other late night wanderers, town drunks, who were not worth meeting either for if you frightened them, they too had friends in strange places and I could wind up facing an army of accusatives without a clue as to what to do.
No, I had learned the orderly way of leaving town promptly and unnoticed. Usually in the direction I wanted to go, west to east, towards sunrise, there by setting myself up to catch a ride the next morning from people from that town going at least east to the next town and hopefully then some. It was a welcome walk that night down that highway, then perpendicular off to the right side. There I settled into to a specific area, with faint lights from the town in one direction and faint lights and sounds from the highway in another. I had to adjust my eyes for a more specific search of where I was about to pass into dreamland. A usual check includes: any signs of a city dump, any large tracks, a check of the sky for impending weather, nearby fences for property lines and cattle and the final and most important check of whatever else was thought needed to be checked to feel safe enough to drop myself down on the ground and bundle up for the night.
Well, some of these nights are better then others. There are nights that are luck-out times and others that are stupid-luck times and others that are not-good-ideas times and lastly, the looks-like-no-sleep times. Tonight was looking exceptional for the luck-out sleep-into-the-deep sort of times. I found a circular elongated pipe about four feet high, not long but covered by earth, maybe for overflow water passage but no dampness around and clearly, no rain tonight. Also newsworthy were, no sign of tracks on either side of the tube and no other lights or structures near by. This seemed to be high ground and secure for what most nights offer.
My bag was down, a little bit of loose sand here and there for softness and this is home. I tend to like closed in places, you know, no direct breeze on your face, no blazing full moon or inviting starry sky and limits as to what could be licking you in the night. This was to be considered a find as I lay down and was gone.
It had been a long day in a series of them and double sleeping was the call. It meant I sleep real hard for the first three to four hours, as in almost nothing could wake me, then lighter as dawn approaches. Well, being that tired and in a tunnel and having forgotten which way was east, I slept. It was a very good double sleep.
My usual wake up pattern was to sight sky, gathering faint light with my eyes, a guess at the time and a little more sleep. Then another sky intake, a new guess at the time, a little more sleep and so on. Well this morning it was not so. I had missed that sky sighting part altogether and therefore time guessing never occurred. Instead, I awoke in, for me, a most unusual way.... the earth appeared to faintly vibrate below me, (zero, begin.) And having spent many years and several earthquakes in southern California, I am quick to assume what is earthbound all around me. But this is not so much a testable theory as a series of physical sensations with constancy and, to my surprise, a building innuendo, both in vibration and in unfamiliar sound, (five seconds.) Well, once this is realized, it is time for secondary information to be added in. A look down both ends of the tube to see for weather, and, more importantly, an impending rush of water to take me by surprise. No. No rain, no wet ground, sun way up, no sense of calamity, no clue, (eighteen seconds.)
It is now time for an adrenal account: the sound is building, the ground is shaking. Quickly, it's a call to all brain cells to kick in and come up with the answer, (twenty-three seconds). Now I am a quick mind riser. When I awake, I have no fog, ever, and I am usually lucid from a dead sleep to start. I am now fully functional and I still have no clue, (twenty-six seconds.) I internally research my entire body for more sensorial info. I redouble my visual matches of this morning's views to last night's view of both ends of the tube and still nothing, (thirty-six seconds.) I try the highway overhead concept. No, (thirty-nine seconds.) I try the cattle crossing overhead concept. Still no, (forty-two seconds.) And the sound is as loud as the shaking is evident. It is time to gear it up. A call to the instincts, empty the mind, a breath, a pause...... Still no answer, (fifty-one seconds.)
And then there comes that time when some slow-motion experiential medium kicks in. It is like polka time. It's a heart pounding cadence that cannot be predicted even though it's coming seems and feels so automatic. Well, that starts to happen, (fifty-three, fifty-four.) In one last ditch effort of swirling mental concentration, I survey the entire mass of what I could know about right now and come up with a huge empty vat, nothing, nada; no answers, (fifty-nine, a minute.)
From then on it happens quickly even though it feels like slow motion. There is the clearly audible inner backstage voice that says "let's-just-remain-sane-until-all-the-votes-are-in." And the subsequent internal self-secretion calm-down process,(one-o-five.) Followed by the, "well they aren't all in and it doesn't matter," followed by another interior voice who seems closer to the impending-ness which is then followed by the subsequent internal collapse of any focus under the shear loudness of this deafening, unidentifiable sound and the physical shaking that now has reached the level of earth-shaking, me-quivering, (one-eleven, one-twelve, one-thirteen.) 'I have nothing else to do but to surrender to my circumstances,' (one-fifteen, one-sixteen,) and accept the unknown no matter how poorly trained all my previous life has prepared me, (one-twenty,) and collapse into the coma-death that is to soon follow. It is at this point of collapse, (one-twenty-three,) but pre-coma-death place, (one-twenty-four,) that I find my self-free falling through the beginning spin of the-all-my-life-passing-before-my-eyes, when that dam of my unknowingness breaks. As the sound reaches a maximum crescendo and the now earth-shaking me-whimpering reaches towards a maximum loss of self-control, I see, in the way that sometimes football teams at homecomings will burst through a huge nicknamed school banner out on to the field, with the T.V. camera placed right down front so that the blast is, at first, a shock of sound and then the burst is first a blur of vision that soon reveals enough evidence of what it really is for it to come into focus, (one-twenty-five.) It is a blank screen. It is a loud blast. A massive visceral explosion. And it becomes the obvious: A Train!
A train overhead ! that blows the top right off of that rather smallish and constricted part of my jellified brain, (one-twenty-six,) thus releasing a huge amount of stored and compacted cranial energy in a four-wall collapsing type of recognition, and by some other means an involuntary laughter, (one-twenty-seven,) the likes of which have permanently become a bench-mark for my future personal surrenders, if need be....even on into other lives I'm sure if necessary, (one minute and twenty-seven seconds.) It was a damn train that woke me that day, this life, this every moment of this life, like no other experience of crude, rude, gross awakening.
Me, my head blown off into laughter. Me, the fool of my own controlling means, having to completely surrender to the obvious, so fully that I could not muster up any anger or any rage in a reaction response. Only joy and laughter. Only gratefulness that life had agreed to play with me that day and not pass me by for someone more interesting and more deserving. Me, who had no one else to share this discovery with then but the wholeness of my own inner-voiced-practical-joking self. One minute and twenty-seven seconds. Yeah, the old king of practical control is dead. Long live the new and grateful king of surrender!
By the time I had crawled out of the tube and ascended to the throne of the tracks, it was a small speck disappearing somewhere close to the horizon, where the wavering veil of heat up from the earth and the ambience of distant clouds met, crowding out what was previously visible. Long live the new King!
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