“The night dream does not belong to us. It is not our possession. With regards to us, it is an abductor, the most disconcerting of abductors: it abducts our being from us. Nights, nights have no history. They are not linked to one another. And when a person has lived a lot, when he has already lived some twenty thousand nights, he never knows in which ancient, very ancient night he started off to dream. The night has no future. There are no doubt nights which are less dark when our day being still lives enough to traffic with its memories.”

-The Poetics of Reverie, Gaston Bachelard, pg. 145

I had a dream but it slipped away. So did the word on the tip of my tongue that was abducted and forgotten in the desolate storm of train of thought. Hah, “train of thought.” How I would love to see the railroad that our outward spreading, spiraling moves along. And what is my role around the train of thought? I want to say that I am its conductor, but it is more likely that I am a passenger or even more likely, a car stopped on the road as the barriers drop down and the train passes. Have you ever seen a train as it derails itself and for an instant is free and unstoppable? It does not last long without the railroad grip. It trips over itself and crumples and piles up and EXPLODES! My mother was no songbird, but she used to sing me the sweetest lullaby about a train headed for Morning Town. Its whistle is blowing, the travelers are sleeping, I am the conductor. “Train whistle blowing, makes a sleepy sound…” As long as the morning lives somewhere, the night is less dark. On my twenty thousandth morning I will wake up with a hangover from dreams; that lullaby playing in the distance. The sound of mother-sings-to-baby skating sadly, sweetly from my tongue.