hop on, hop off, these thoughts
i remember
seeing her a lot that summer 3 years ago, as i walked up and down lyndale, hennepin, and lake street. she was skinny, eyes dark and gray, and always wearing the same backpack and filthy black leather jacket covered in punk-rock buttons. as i sat outside on the bench in front of bryant lake bowl one night, enjoying how the sideways setting sun lit up lake street, i saw her walking toward me. she seemed to recognize me. i smiled. she stopped and asked me for a light. “don’t smoke” i said. we asked each other’s names. and got to chatting. “mind if i join you? just cuz i’m homeless doesn’t mean i can’t buy a beer” she said with a smile, and went in and bought herself a pbr tallboy. just as she sat down again, an old man with a long white beard, an engineer’s cap and worn overalls slowly moved by pushing a walker. she got up suddenly, hugged him and talked with him for a few minutes. “who was that?” i asked. “that’s my friend” she said. “i met him at the hobo convention. he’s kinda famous.” i laughed “hobo convention?” we talked for hours that night about train hopping. she told me how she caught out of Kansas City, her hometown, up to Minneapolis. she told me about the hobo convention in Britt, Iowa. and she told me all about how to catch what she called her dream ride. “what’s your dream ride?” i asked her. “a 48 special on a hotshot” she said. “when they double stack a 48 foot container up on top of 2 20 footers, it makes an overhang on each end” she explained. “the containers sit in what they call well cars. some well cars don’t have no floor, they’re called suicide rides. but if you hop the right kind, you go to the end of the containers that aren’t facing the wind, and you can kinda get down in the well and the overhang above will protect you from the rain. and cuz it’s a hotshot freight train, it’ll go non-stop.” later, i asked her “why are you up here?” “just trying to get away” she said after a while, and looked away. “just a homeless junkie” she said with a sweet sad smile. she asked for my number and i gave it to her. i never saw her again that summer. she never called.
hop on to get away, hop off at a story to tell
hop on, hop off, these thoughts
i remember
news stories from 11 years ago about immigrants trying to seek asylum in england by hopping on eurostar trains in france and crossing the eurotunnel to england. they were middle eastern, eastern european, african. such large numbers that the french red cross set up a refugee camp in sangatte, france, near the tunnel entrance. there were stories of those who survived. who somehow managed to get past security and fencing without being seen. who somehow found spaces under and inside the rail cars to cram their bodies into. who somehow held on. to this day, i remember most of all the stories of those who crammed themselves inside the wheel wells. they held themselves inches from 3 foot tall steel wheels slicing around 2000 times every minute. at 180 miles per hour. for 2 and a half hours. in pitch blackness. the deafening roar. the thought of a better life what kept them holding on.
hop on at a hope, hop off with your life
hop on, hop off, these thoughts
our thoughts
like trains. one to the next. to the next to the next. we sit passively as passengers on this train of our thoughts. we daydream. we ask ourselves how could i possibly think such a thought. we feel helpless to a thought. we try to be the heroic engineer at the controls of our thoughts. as we grip the controls, we love where a thought goes. as we grip the controls, we try not to think a thought. we try to think of other thoughts. we imagine our body in another place. we try to make a thought disappear. intoxicated, high, we try to make a thought not be, to get relief from a wound or words said or mistakes long ago we can’t even see or touch in front of us but feel deep inside. the power of thought holding us, pushing us, bending us, taking us to worse places, moving us to better places, changing us. asylum seekers and engineers, passengers and addicts, and the thoughts never stopping.
hop on at the controls, hop off uncontrollable
hop on, hop off, these thoughts
i meditate
outside to feel the wind, the sun shining, the bugs crawling on my skin, the weight of my body against the earth, the sounds of all things moving around me. i meditate to see when i am crammed up in the wheel wells of my own thoughts. i meditate to see that thoughts come and thoughts go, no matter how good or how terrible. i meditate to see a space between thoughts, and feel that space between thoughts getting wider. like the thought trains of my mind start to uncouple, break up and slow down. no longer the helpless passenger trying to hold on, no longer the frantic engineer trying to control, the space between thoughts gets wider and wider and wider. those days, those hours, those minutes where the thought train in my head feels like it’s moving 300 miles per hour, meditation is me hopping on and hopping off each thought. this is where peace begins. with each breath in and each breath out, with the feel of the wind on my skin, the tickling ant on my leg, the bird rustling in the tree behind me, each thought comes and each thought goes. and i am here and i am now. here, now, it is like this.
hop on where i’m not, hop off where i am
hop on, hop off, these thoughts
heat flow 