Ducks in a Row

    Being in a crowd gives one a sense of anonymity, or the possibility of one. Hiding in plain sight is usually successful unless someone is looking for you, or circumstance shines that light on you. It was what happened that day. I cannot say I was hiding, or that she was looking for me, but either way, the light did shine on me.

    Like most people trapped by circumstance, crowds, trains, buses, I pull my shell around me, keep my eyes occupied with the character of the floor, and for all practical purposes, disappear. That is why on that fateful day I was surprised to hear the voice. A voice I didn’t recognize, but then why would I. I was surrounded by voices and attempting to exclude and elude them all in a way to preserve a sense of self. 

    “Is that you Jon?” The voice somehow breaking through the barriers, slithering across the floor, finding a slit to invade my defenses. I did not see the genesis of the question, nor did I wish to. I kept my eyes focused on the universe below me, its canyons, ridges, trash. 

    “Jon! Is that you? I thought it was. It has been such a long time.” The voice close, but remaining faceless. “It’s me, Janice,” the words drifting above the drone, the murmur of lives.

    Janice, the tumblers move, the mind races, bolts of lightning form behind my closed eyes explode, Janice? Do I know a Janice?

    “Janice, from school. We took sociology together. We sat next to each other in Baker Hall. You remember?”

    I did remember. It came flooding back with the power of an avalanche, wiping out the here and now, leaving only the then. Janice, reddish hair, glasses, sweaters that made me sneeze. Sociology; hated the class; predetermined percentage grading.

    Janice was going to be a …what? Oh yah, a school counselor. 

    “So how are you?” Throwing my words into the eternity behind me. She didn’t answer immediately. She too was trapped in the mass of bodies waiting for our train. “Sorry, can’t move.” My words no longer private, unleashed, a response to a past I had forgotten purposely existed.

    I can picture her now, reddish hair, brown eyes, habitually wearing a sweater, cashmere. The sweaters appeared to be alive, the tendrils dancing in the slightest breeze, static electricity causing pacemakers to run amok. 

    Janice, the one who believed we should all become minimalists if the world was to survive. “Place your young in the care of the village, the old on ice flows, as they are no longer contributing to the greater society, but bringing it to its knees,” the sentiment expressed by those who don’t have to face the imminent consequences of conjecture about aging.   

    The train arrives, the mass of humanity, like centipedes, move slowly towards the gaping orifices awaiting us. Unable to move, to turn, to identify Janice before being swallowed up in this mass of humanity. Needing to see her to confirm my memories of a time when nothing was impossible, everything attainable, old folks homes, porches with rocking chairs, not an ice flow in sight; all disappears in the hurricane of voices and shuffling feet.

    We are pushed in different directions. Her calls bubbling up periodically from the mass that moves like a glacier towards a perceived destination, slowly abrasive, and then nothing. A thin voice stating I should call; why? when? how? And then the voice is gone as if it never existed, leaving me with only the memory of a memory, a miss remembered past?

    No way of affirming my assumptions of who she was now, was like, did she continue to wear sweaters that appeared to live?  Did it matter if its tendrils danced with an electric charge that made it impossible to concentrate? Probably not.

*

   The light drifting from the arched window of the terminal seeking recognition, rejection, a purpose. The face it exposes brings a sense of recognition. The heavy eyebrows, the thin lips, the sculpted ears; Jon. 

    Like a photo from an old box of treasures set aside for that one day, when the rain would not leave the confines of your mind, when the breeze of the past awakened a spirit you thought was dead; Jon standing only a few yards from a new reality. I am stranded in the heard that seeks a destination, and yet can’t navigate the next step with purpose, only capitulation. 

    Jon was to be a political pundit, a guide to those in search of a future in change. His outlook focused on others, and his part in directing their future. The questions of course, given the days of instability, poverty, a dead-end environmental future, seek alternative answers. 

    Did he succeed, did he feel like he made the difference that caused his future to embrace his dream. Dreams, that nebulous spirit in the present that causes us to believe in change, making a difference, no matter the odds. Were we ever so gullible, mailable, stoned by our expectations of possibility?

    And just like that, he is swept to the recesses of a past without me having explored the reality of his future, mine, ours. 

    He was a kind person. Shy to the point of being indecisive, pragmatic to the point of frustration. I loved him in a way that made no sense in a time of hormonal explosions and self-awareness, yet it seemed the only course at the time. I was not sure of his persuasion; he kept himself above the emotional and physical advertising so prevalent at that age. He was an enigma; neither black nor white; gray. But more than gray; more a lack of available color leaving only what an overcast day allows.

    He was pushed by the heard towards the mechanical mouth and consumed, a sacrifice to progress; the light retreating to the window from whence it came. I retreating to the memories that pulled the question from the past; what if?      

*

    Jon Nichols? The doctor will see you now. Please follow me. We walk down the dimly lit corridor lined with picture of old men and women who at one time too had unfettered dreams.

    We arrive at a door, the lettering on the glass, Doctor Janice Adams: Hamlin School of Psychiatry.

    The door is pushed inwards exposing a large desk, a window that looks several floors to the street below. The woman behind the desk, brownish hair, brown eyes, and a sweater that appears to dance for the sheer pleasure it conveys.

    She looks up. A smile finds her face, her eyes absorb the light from the window, she stands extending her hand. I cringe, the familiarity smothers me, my defenses dissolve leaving me exposed to the realities and regrets of the past, and failures of a future.

    All I can do is smile and squeeze the hand that I pray will keep me from following the light to the street.

*

    He looks smaller, thin, almost transparent. His hair no longer thick, bushy, but frosted by time to the dull gray of day-old snow. His eyes no longer sparkle with possibility, but have taken on the dullness of unrequited wonder.

    I no longer see the promise, the questions being asked, answered; now only the search for meaning as if there is one, and he has as yet to find it. He sits across from me looking past me to the street as though the answers are there, and he is wasting time, mine, his, ours. 

    Jon, do you remember me? Janice, from school; Baker Hall. You were going to be a teacher, I was going to be someone looking for answers to unasked questions, remember?

    He seems to remember, but pushes the remembrance back into the darkness that has filled him with the un-necessity of life, his. The dome that kept him from commitment, that kept him out of the fray, has become more opaque. He can no longer see beyond supposition, no longer be able to believe. He is dead, but doesn’t realize it. His past has come full circle, it is now his present, his future, and although it is my responsibility to help, I don’t know if I want to, if I can, if it would be in his best interest to postpone the inevitable.

*

    She sees me for what I am, a dead man walking. I see her for what she is, a dream weaver. I should tell her there is no future in dreams.  Dreams are designed for the young, for a time when the future has meaning, possibility, a pathway to life. And yet to condemn the intrenched to impossibility, improbability, hope, leaves heaven naked and alone, without the possibility of attainment.

*

    Good to see you Jon. What have you been up to?

*

    Oh, you know. Same old, same old, just a different color.