{amnesia}

Amnesia was even more bizarre than we expected. It was nearing 8am and our legs ached, but we never stopped moving, bound by invisible strings to the hands of the man behind the decks. The cavernous den devoured us in its ferocious reverberation of Techno.

An eruption of liquid nitrogen fractured the booming with a hiss. As the vapor dissipated, we found ourselves surrounded once again by the strangest of strangers, flashing each other black eyes and aphonic recognition. The crowd had become a pulsating organism, coiling itself into every corner and crevice of available space.

Caught in this cocoon of an eternal present, the man on stage conducted us. His skull and glasses glinted as he raised vinyl in the air, reaching up to the morning light that poured in from the sky-lit ceiling. We barely noticed it was already tomorrow.

A technofied matriarch in a yellowed lace wedding dress held her post in the DJ booth next to him. Slack-jawed, she extended a ragged teddy bear toward us, the decades of hedonism etched on her face, wizened, searching still for more.

As the light shone in, we could see each other’s bedraggled bodies, sweat soaked and spent. But our teeth clenched in elated smiles.

The organism began to part itself down the middle as a tall, bearded man in sandals and tattered robes had effortlessly created a pathway through the horde of zombie revelers. He looked like a hippie shaman. We could feel the magnetism of his presence as he approached us. We locked eyes and as he passed he said, “Nostradamus prophesied that this island would be the Earth’s final refuge. The patterns of the wind will save us from Armageddon. Remember this when you leave here.”

{fatality: expect delays} 

Biking the 7.5 miles from Hillsdale to Millbrae, catching a real nice neon pink-orange sunset as it dips behind the fog all iridescent with periwinkle edges—because CalTrain hit a “trespasser” at Morrell Ave. Trespassing—killing themselves where they don’t belong, messing with the Friday night plans of the living. 

I wouldn't have caught the sunset otherwise. I would’ve been on the train, staring at my screen like everyone else, killing my time in between work and home. 

Cars swoosh by me too close and too fast and I mutter “motherfuckers” to myself and imagine throwing a defiant brick through their windshields, or even worse, losing my balance and tipping into the road and getting crushed under the dispassionate rubber and steel of a shitty SUV. It took months, years, decades to shape these limbs, but they could easily be obliterated in a flippant, senseless second. Human error can be costly, and it can be fortuitous.

A helicopter circles the scene above, blades pummeling the air in rhythmic, soothing slaps. I pass by the tracks where it happened. A fire truck and EMTs are mulling around casually and I catch the eye of a fireman standing in the shoulder. Downtown Burlingame is on the opposite side of the street, busy with people dining al fresco, boozing, shaking off the week, living. His face is grey—he can’t shake anything off yet. 

I rubberneck for a moment but there’s nothing to see through the trees, and there's nothing for them to save, but the helicopter is getting it all, it’ll be on the evening news I won’t watch. I keep chasing that bright orange spot, trying not to stare into it too long, trying not to miss any of the colors while they change with each second and the fog overtakes the day, grey and violet and violent. 

{waiting for the 191} 

I'd seen him the day before, lying on his side, unconscious on the train platform, skin cracking under the sun. People glanced down and walked around him, myself included, scurrying to the next thing on our to-do lists for the day.

Humanity waits for no one.

Today he was awake, pacing the yellow line next to the tracks with a wooden staff in his hand. His army fatigues and headband were the telltales of a veteran; he was stuck somewhere between the trauma of duty and the purposeless ennui of civilian life. He mumbled to himself and looked up at the sky every few steps, grappling with some irrevocable past, or future, or both, or neither. 

I tensed a bit the closer he got. There was no one else on the platform with us, and the 8-foot tall wooden staff felt unpredictable.

Aggression can easily be disguised as self-defense. 

He stopped a few feet from the bench where I sat. We had a moment of staring; it wasn't like with other people, where one of you would look away before it got uncomfortable, before you could really see into each other. His eyes were milky blue, and for the moment, calm. He smiled, disarmed. 

"Can I run my hands through your hair?" he asked.

"No, no thank you." I smiled back then broke his gaze, sliding down the bench slightly away from him.

"Why not? Awww, c'mon." He waited but I didn't know what else to say. "It's ok, you don't have to. I like your hair though." He paused and turned to face the sun. It was late summer in Northern California and the sky was swirling with layers of clouds; if you watched closely you could see one layer moving slightly faster than the one behind it, silent and massive.

We are impossibly small.

"Have you ever read National Geographic?" he asked. I nodded yes. "My dad, he used to read the National Geographic cover to cover. There were other magazines--The New Yorker, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science... others. But he'd put his initials in the corner of every page he read out of National Geographic. One day he left it open to the most important picture--the oldest living veteran, eyes sparkling, beautiful. And the quote below it said, 'As long as man is what he is, there will be war.’"

"Do you think that's true?" I asked, knowing it was. We didn't need Einstein or an equation to tell us what we were capable of.  

He pondered that for a few minutes. The light changed as the cloud cover thickened; it was as if his thoughts had darkened and changed the landscape. 

Thoughts become things.

He answered my question with another question: "You know we were promised a thousand years of peace?" Without waiting for my response, he looked up at the sky again, hands open at his sides, repentant, prone. He choked back tears and said, "Any day now, boss."  

I absorbed the hopelessness in his voice, and tried to imagine all the experiences that had led him here, but of course I couldn't. I only had a vague sense of how my life would be completely different without the endless spoils of war. Every fiber of my physical existence was woven into the fabric of imperialism, endlessly unfolding. And here he was, an embodiment of collateral damage. 

"Don't mind me," he said, as I snapped out of the abstract awareness of my own privilege and ignorance. He walked back along the yellow line to the other end of the platform as the train approached, a screeching monster of steel and smoke. 

{reunion}

Beyond the pressurized oval portal, a landscape of cloud cover like mountain ranges of cirrus mixed with cumulus stirs my soul awake. Possibility is believable at high altitudes, and my lofty dreams feel within reach. Traveling at a humming 481 mph ground speed, racing thoughts and grandiose hopes billow and vaporize. 

From the security of my cramped cabin, I detect a fellow aircraft. Only a toy-sized model from this distance, it expels a long white streak of fuel in its wake. Our synchronized forward movement makes it appear as though it’s not going anywhere at all, suspended against the blue with that constant stream of smoky effervescence. 

Discussions of shared blood types, inherited disorders, and family values linger in my thoughts. Another passage into the Old World has left me feeling deeply loved, unaccomplished, naive, connected, and bewildered all together. 

A father-daughter debate is fueled by my cousin Susan’s young, exacting, journalistic wit, bumping up against Uncle Kevin’s wizened, whiskey-soaked gumption. Their dialogue collides over crystal wine glasses and a satin table cloth, and leaves me wondering if I know anything at all. Comparisons of ethnic lineage—my Aunt Joan’s German practicality, my father’s Irish aversion to logistics in favor of dreamy details. Examinations of social structure, economic fluctuations, projects, high rises, foreign travel, and weddings abroad. Remembrances of births, the mother’s bodily sacrifice. 

My uncle offered an alternative perspective. “Birth is a miracle, but so is adoption. I know a couple who went from Wyoming to Chicago to New York to Paris to Senegal for that orphaned baby girl. In eight days, her institutionalization had found her surrounded by these loving people. That’s a miracle.” 

I had stationed myself next to him at the opposite side of the table from my father. The ten faces shared a genetic disposition for lively conversation; flawed beings creating brief moments of perfection. We gently, cheerfully avoided the reason for our gathering: the imminent death of the matriarch. She had passed down to me her hair and blood type, and I’d most likely inherit her deputren’s claws and her dogged longevity. Cousin Brendan, always the angelic optimist, called old age “something to look forward to.” Aunt Joan, the eternal pragmatist, warned me, “We all have to make sure we have our ducks in a row before it’s too late.” 

Facing each other at opposite heads of the long table, the fathers romanticized about the old days, how things used to be, driven by sweat and ingenuity rather than the laziness of modern convenience. Meanwhile they pass their free time watching ESPN and chinking glasses of amber elixir, one more toast to good health. Uncle Kevin, so sure of his opinions at one point, cuts himself down the next: “But what do I know? I drink whiskey.” 

My flying vessel bobs on air currents over the Rockies, approaching Modesto, only 127 more miles. Already I feel the familiar warmth spreading in my chest; a feeling that means home. I still don’t know what I’m doing here or why, but for now just being is enough—belonging. 

The depressions and wrinkles, cracks and crevices in the terrain 27,546 feet below remind me of Nana’s weathered skin, her thinned cheeks, and sunken but lively blue-green eyes, open wide to a world she’s swiftly departing. 

“Only three of the McCarthy women ever left New Jersey,” Uncle Kevin reminded me proudly. 

Perhaps I was influenced by my other, maternal grandmother’s stories of her sojourn to the West during World War II with her husband, an army officer. She escaped only to be sent back home again, trading Portland for Jersey City, a return to the familiar avenues of their bloodlines. 

We all fight the battle for meaning, reeling against stagnation and perpetual dissatisfaction. My cousin Colin attends focus groups and collects cash for helping the traders at Uncle Kev’s firm, striving to expand his worldly comforts. “Who wouldn’t want to do nothing?” he jokes in all seriousness. My cousin Brendan teaches inmates—a social worker rewarded in the intangible currency of human potential rather than a cushy salary. My cousin Susan writes, the truth-seeking reporter hungry for recognition, not yet (but soon to be) tainted by the seduction of PR and marketing. 

My brother sits at a corner of the table in relative silence, a lanky, scruffy man-child of twenty; a jobless, wayward student, desperately holding onto the status quo of childhood. 

Inevitable talk of retirement bubbles up among the parents; approaching sixty, they ache for relaxation. 

And not a word of protest or interjection from Nana, sitting poised with a cancerous mass in her pancreas, ready for her vicodin nightcap. She is a stark contrast to my recently deceased maternal grandmother, who left the world a bit older, completely blind, and utterly penniless. 

And now I land in my chosen native home, detaching again from these filial influences, immersing in the newness of the West and my own uncharted frontiers.  

{dreamscape 1: a day at the beach}  

The family of four is gathered on a square of white. Like a shimmering exodermis, the sand surrounding them cooks in the sunlight. 

The father and mother quiver, embraced in heat waves as they watch their son and daughter swim. The boy is shivering on his chubby legs in the shallow water, too young to pass the wave break. The girl is bolder. She abandons him to dive up and down in the cool salty bath. She’s unconcerned with slippery sea creatures and too careless to worry about the wicked grasp of a rip tide. 

She imagines herself to be a beautiful mermaid, remembering the story her mother read to her many times before bed. Mermaids were not like people. They were hybrids—part human, part animal, part divine—who became immortalized in the sea foam when they died. The girl cups their precious remains in her pink, pruney hands, sticking her nose into the saltwater, feeling it pop against her eyelashes, examining each bubble. She could see their souls glistening inside. 

She dives back down and swims on, pulsating, weightless with elation, forgetting about her parents and brother. When she turns back towards the shore, it’s miles away. Her father is planted firm on a dune, a dwarfed version of his six foot frame. His face is detached, as he covers his brow against the blazing sun, searching for her. 

The distance she so effortlessly put between them now seems impossible to reverse. She begins to panic as a feeling of helplessness overcomes her. She’s found herself in the loneliest spot in the world: adrift in the middle of the ocean, beckoning in silence to a speck on the shore. 

She turns back to the horizon and finds a miniature sail boat floating within reach. Desperate to escape the deep water, she climbs aboard. The boat is only large enough for her. She climbs in to join a flopping pile of silver netted fish, but there’s no mariner in sight. She ponders the empty boat. She separated herself from her only source of security. She can’t understand why her parents aren’t frantic to rescue her. She feels as if she’s watching them through a spyglass from hundreds of miles away. 

{street sheets}  

Hello folks my name is Robert and I'm here selling street sheets. I'm here to make an honest living. I was in prison for 20 years so it's hard to find honest work but I do alright. I was in prison for street violence but that was when I was a youth. I don't make criminal money anymore. I've fallen down a lot but I pick myself up and dust myself off. I'm gonna make it in this life, or I'm gonna die trying. That's why I sell these street sheets, street sheets...

{the sandman}

Years ago, in another life, I woke to look out the smeared window of a Greyhound bus I had been riding all night. The streetlights whizzed past like an alien army of glowing golden orbs, and I pretended that we were fleeing a UFO invasion. My miniature body swayed as the bus sped along a dark highway. I thought about outer space. Daddy told me that there’s no air in outer space, so you have to wear a special suit that helps you breathe. I pictured myself inside a gigantic spaceship, feeling protected from the aliens and the immense darkness outside my window. I was six at the time and unbridled imagination eagerly filled the gaping holes in my confused perception of reality. 

Cupping dimpled hands around my face, I peered out the grimy window searching for signs of Earthling life. The pane was cold and my breath fogged the view that wasn’t there. I pulled away and saw my own face, blurry and frightened, staring back at me. A larger blurry face appeared above mine. It was friendly but unfamiliar, and it made me think of my Daddy again. I realized I didn’t know where he was. I didn’t know where I was either. 

The face smiled at me in the window and I felt its hand rub my back. I was afraid to turn around so I kept staring at our reflections, feeling the icy air creep into the bus and penetrate the thickness of my wooly sweater that Mommy had promised would keep me warm. The face stayed very still, like it was waiting for me to move first. The hand was motionless on my back now, resting there, feeling my lungs expand and contract. 

Finally it spoke. 

“What were you dreaming about, Jeremy?” 

Without turning around, I wandered back into my mind. 

“About the end of the world. I was with my Daddy and we were walking through town, past my school, past the church, and all the buildings were falling apart. Our clothes were all ripped up too, and we couldn’t find Mommy. Other people around us were running but we didn’t know why. Daddy picked me up and asked a policeman for help, but the policeman pushed us into an alley and told us to sit on the ground and wait there. Mommy was there. I saw her sitting in a corner by herself. Lots of other people were sitting on the ground too, but I saw Mommy right away. She was crying. I went over to her and she held my hands. She felt my hands with her hands and told me: ‘You’re so soft,’ and I said: ‘So are you.’” 

"Then what happened, Jeremy?” The face’s voice was gentle, and I liked that it was interested in my story. I felt less afraid talking to it. 

“Then I was by myself. I wasn’t in the alley with Mommy and Daddy anymore. I was in a dark room with lots of machines and blinky lights. Someone else was there with me but I don’t know who—I think it was a lady. She was on the other side of the room. We were hiding from a monster.”

“What kind of monster?” 

“An alien monster. He was in the middle of the room, hooked up to the machines. There were big, thick wires sticking into his back. He looked like he was sleeping. He was big like a gorilla with a green neck like a lizard but he had arms and hands like a human. His mouth was open and I saw he had lots of sharp teeth and a purple tongue. I was really scared and I didn’t want to wake him up, but the lady moved and as soon as she did, the machines started beeping really loud.”

“Did he wake up?”

“Well, the lady screamed and screamed and then he sure did wake up. He didn’t notice me though, and it seemed like he was gonna eat her up, but she slid a sword across the floor to me. I picked it up and slashed his head off. He had a thick neck and it took a couple swings for me to hack off the whole thing. He didn’t bleed but he was red inside. That’s all I remember.” 

Finally, I turned around in my seat. The bus was very quiet and I could hear people in nearby seats snoring. The man staring back at me was a complete stranger. I wondered again where my Daddy was, and tried to remember how I had gotten onto that bus in the first place. All I could think about was the alien. 

“I like your dream, Jeremy.” He smiled at me as if he knew me, and I smiled back, bewildered but also comforted. I felt understood, even though I still didn’t know what was happening.

“Where’s my Daddy?” 

“You have some sleepy dust in your eyes.” He chuckled and brushed my lashes. 

“Who are you?” 

“I’m the Sandman.” 

That night was another life. But I think about that night when I was six years old every time I look up at an inky sky; every time I see a dingy Greyhound bus; every time I see digital road signs that spell out “AMBER ALERT” with a license plate number. I think about it every time my son asks me if aliens exist. And every time I let go of his hand.