Title Credit: Act-III, Scene-I in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.


Here’s the dream:

I am driving like someone who’s going to miss the cruise ship, the plane, the loved one at the gate.

My GPS starts losing its dynamic features. It goes from a detailed visual map, to a cartoon scene, to a blue screen. I careen onto a highway exit. I can see a drawbridge in the distance. I have to make it before the connector goes up.

On the bridge, I see that the first of the two sides extends halfway across the river. Cars have to line up, then the second half will extend so that we can creep across. This does not seem like a good system to me. In dream-like fashion, I can see the way the mechanics work from below and it’s precarious, at best.

But it’s my only way over. By the time I decide to try it, the bridge is retracting. I have to jump my car without any sort of momentum, as I see the watery gap below.

At this point, I’m no longer driving. It seems like a ferry ride, where you leave your car in the hands of a porter. Next, I’m running along a sidewalk to pick up my car, which is not in sight.

There are people handling the embarkation on this side of the bridge, very official with vests and badges, and they are explaining to me that I have no paperwork. So sorry. You can’t have your car without the proper paperwork. I know! I can imagine the reasons, but I had no time. Why can’t I get my car?

They explain that there are excise people waiting on this side for cars without paperwork. They’re quick, efficient, and they took my car. I am frustrated, stymied. I wake up.


There’s a lot going on right now.

There’s a divide. There’s a connection that I don’t want to miss. It might not be up to me. You know me, so you know that this goes against every control-freak, Type A, Virgo, oldest child ruler-of-the-world bone in my body.

So much of it’s out of my control. There are folks in official positions with whom I can’t argue. You take what you get.

I’ve recently seen a newly-coined phrase: post-traumatic election syndrome. So little is up to us, in the end, it seems.

But I hope, if I ever get a chance to pick up the dream, that I fight to reach my destination.