The feeling is as if I’m in high-speed dream that lasts for five hours. It is elongated. Both in time and in distance. My body is moving forward and my mind is racing backward. Inside I am stretched.
Remnants of the past race by. I know them. I’ve been there in context. They are quiet. Sleeping. Waiting. The vast blankets of snow light them subtlety. I want to leap out and be there.
Doing so would destroy the illusion. It exists only because I am moving. Because if I were the subject and not the viewer I would be lost and unidentifiable.
These places predate me. Small streets. Small towns. A single sign illuminated as a designation that someone, a few, are actually there. I can’t see them. But I know. I wonder about what they’re saying to one another. They must be speaking. It is what people do.
I myself am silent as I move first towards them, then away from them. I can’t close my eyes. If I were to, everything would vanish.
Occasionally the train stops and people exit into the darkness. I watch their faceless shadows. Had I known them first they would connect me, but I don’t. They too vanish as the train departs.
Later and eventually I step out into the darkness. I am now the subject and am being viewed. I stand. Wait. Elyria, Ohio. It is real. I have been here before. I could walk the streets and no one would know me. That would change in a few days.
I would take a room here and come every so often. Not to live but so that I could observe. It would become my reoccurring dream. One that I never tire of seeing.
Urban In-Fill 