track is to time as tunnel is to transformation

after visiting Selena's flat i wandered into another house (built on a cliff edge like all the houses in my dreams), where some old friends were hanging out, and all the curtains bedspreads table cloths were a syrupy lime green color that nauseated me but then i remembered i had a sweater in that color (i don't really). so i went out onto the backporch, really the landing over the back stair well, which was a small bedroom decorated with all my twin brother's discarded childhood toys, including a strange multimedia collage of a sci-fi train depot. Rob (who i saw yesterday) came out to smoke a cigarette and asked to show me the rest of the house. we went down and explored several rooms, one of which i thought Sarah Baure used to live in, except it was like the room was being swallowed by the wood paneled walls and doorway. it was covered in yarn and her spinning wheel still sat in the middle. i somehow missed the ground floor.

outside, i found myself walking along the train tracks with someone i thought might have been an old childhood friend (either James Thompson, who i haven't thought about since middle school, or Marshall). there were several tracks parallel to each other and they were all still active. every few minutes a train would appear around the bend and blast by, making it an interesting little game to not get hit. i looked back, and saw my two younger brothers following along the track. devon kept on balancing on the rails and i was worried he was going to get hit. along the track to the left, Christian and Chris St-Pierre were walking (i also saw them yesterday), and we were all heading for the vast train tunnel that appeared up ahead. eventually we all crossed to the left, james was gone at this point and devon was ahead of me. my friends took a small access passage to the side while my brothers and i forged ahead, running swiftly through the dark coals next to the track until we came to a larger room that sloped upwards. devon bounded up the hill saying it was possible to do in five leaps, with malcolm on his heels. i however had a bit of a struggle getting my legs out of the now quicksand like mass of soot. at the top was a small exhaust tunnel they had both just squeezed into to crawl back to the surface. i looked at this and decided to wake up.

i think one of my goals for today might have to be to get a flashlight and go explore the train tunnel down in the hollow. three nights of train dreams, there's something up in my subconscious about the need to get moving.

Later: the hollow is dark and quiet, no busses, no fireflies, the occasional bat and the crunch of gravel as spat and i walk along the rails. "so if you see any vehicles up there, make yourself invisible. i guess it's more of a mind thing. i hear if you think of fresh fruit salad cops can't see you. that's an old SoCal punk mindtrick. Exene Cervenka told that to Sweet-tooth, who told it to me, and now i'm telling it to you." we grow quiet as we approach the tunnel's mouth, passing the spot where Selena and i found the dog's head. crunch of gravel, voices from over the hedges, and a bus on the bridge. paranoia and rot in the bushes.

and the gaping dark, with two steel strings leading off like guiderails to time. flashlights lit we step inside. it's muddy, thick gray ooze covering the tracks, and water drips down the walls onto years of worn graffiti. every 40 yards or so an alcove sits off to the side, large enough for two people to stand in if a train comes. after the first few moments with the mouth growing smaller behind us it's really not as imposing, not like the tunnel in my dreams.

not like the train tunnel from my childhood, back in old town in alexandria, left over from an earlier age and now connecting a grocery store and a playground. we used to walk through it to go swing and practice cartwheels in the field on the other side. i remember the lights were a ghostly yellow and the echoes were filled with extra voices. reaching the other side without running was always the biggest challenge.

it's hard to stomp through the slime, but we're between train schedules so we have time. looking down i notice footprints in the mud, someone else walked this way since the last rain. barefoot, and running all over the place. spat jokes it might be a ghost, but there's nothing really all that haunted about this tunnel. we try to gauge if we've made it halfway, and soon come out in Oakland, down in Panther Hollow, pants and shoes caked and with all the surreal feeling of having taken the offbeaten path.