Last night I dreamed that I was driving back to my former town up north, and along the way, I drove under a very high bridge that held a train, but the bridge had collapsed, and the train was in pieces.  Some pieces were still perched on parts of the bridge still standing.  Some were strewn from one horizon to the other.  Some had fallen and crashed and exploded in a flurry of devastation.  There were construction workers and relief workers up on the bridge fragments and down on the ground.  There was a giant crane attempting to pick up one large, broken segment.  Work was underway to put the train back together, but it would take some time.

All the while, I was on the highway getting closer to my former town, and I was filled with anguish.  Someone special entered my mind, and I thought, “I will never see that person again.”  I felt so much grief.  The starkness of it filled me with a sense of desolation, as though it were finally sinking in.

I woke up wondering what the train symbolized, but I noticed today that I’ve written about trains and bridges several times in recent posts.  In one post, Meet Me in Montauk, I wrote about the opening scene of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The movie begins with Joel waiting for a train.  On an impulse, he takes a train to Montauk and finds Clementine.

In another post, Let It Pull You Out To Sea, I mention going on a bike ride with my current partner over bridges that used to hold trains, and I mentioned his first attempt at writing a novel, which begins with a collapsing bridge.  In Sending Love, I relate a dream of someone dear to me experiencing pain under a broken bridge.

Who was hurting under the bridge?  I wish I knew.  I feel affection and pain from someone in particular, but I can’t send a message.  Could the train be him?  Maybe the train represents a lot of things.  Perhaps some aspect of my own self.  Maybe one person I know is hurting, and another… oh I don’t know.

I will keep sending love.

** Immediately after writing this, I drove on the highway, and directly above me in the sky, I saw a huge, writhing mass of starlings swirling through the air like a school of fish.  Just like the starlings in my poem in Sending Love.  I never saw that here, only in Europe.  For a few moments on the road, I was surrounded by Paris.  I will take that as a sign that my love is reaching the person who needs it.