Baggage Claim
I’ve forgotten most of it, but I remember stepping off a train that looked like the BART in San Francisco and seeing my brother.
“Do you have my bag?” I asked, as the train doors closed behind me.
Peter shook his head, and I turned around to see my bag sitting on the train that was slowly pulling out of the station.
Things got fuzzy after that, but I don’t recall being particularly upset about the lost luggage. Still, it was very important to me.
Okay, so clearly this dream was about loss.
The case resembled an old style fencing bag, and since my brother was on Hunter College’s fencing team in the 1970s, perhaps losing it was symbolic of losing Peter.
I still have these dark moments when I think about my brother and feel the terrible gap in my life. Then it passes and I feel better — at least for a little while.
I’ve had several of these painful periods during the last week, so I guess it’s not surprising that my subconscious mind would take notes.
Some people believe that dreaming you left your luggage on a train usually means you feel overwhelmed by responsibilities or anxious about losing control during a major life transition.
I deal with anxiety, especially now, since my back has been giving me so much misery that I still can’t work out. The condition has improved since my screaming sessions two weeks ago, but I’m nervous about a return visit of those agonizing moments.
Another theory says that luggage in your dream symbolizes the many desires, worries, responsibilities, or needs that you’re carrying with you and weighing you down.
Leaving it behind can mean you accidentally dropped an emotional weight or fear you’ve lost a part of your daily security. I guess grief about Peter constitutes an emotional loss, and “accidentally” leaving it on the train suggests I want to be free.
All Aboard!
And then others say a train represents a forward moving journey or a transition from one phase of life to another. Leaving your bags behind on that train points to stress about keeping up with the pace of change or feeling unprepared for what comes next.
That sounds familiar. In addition to my back, I’m stressing about the coming cold weather and where I should go on vacation — provided my sciatica doesn’t clobber me.
I was done up in some kind of Huckleberry Finn outfit for what I think was Halloween, complete with a straw hat, which prompted Peter to comment that I looked like an illegal alien.
“That’s undocumented immigrant to you, pal!” I responded.
We flipped each other off in the comments section, just as we did in person when we were kids, and I couldn’t help feeling sad that we’ll never be able to do that again.
Facebook jolted me a second time this morning when it revived an old post from Peter responding to a query from me about his Top 10 favorite books.
His list included such gems The Godfather by Mario Puzo; The Shining by Stephen King; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; and The Sea Wolf by Jack London.
There were also two titles I didn’t recognize.
The first was Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, a Scottish journalist.
It was an early study of crowd psychology first published in 1841. Present day writers on economics have lauded the three chapters on economic bubbles.
The other was The Predator’s Ball, Wall Street Journal writer Connie Bruck’s book that recounts the rise of Michael Milken, his firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, and the leveraged buyout boom they helped fuel in the 1980s.
Peter had worked on Wall Street for many years, so these choices make sense.
“Special mention to Dr. Seuss, who got me started reading,” he added. “Books like the Sherlock Holmes series, The Hardy Boys (yes, when I was small), and others that kept my interest — and Edgar Allan Poe, whose short stories really kept me spellbound.”
I read those books, as well, and I've got plenty of fond memories of my own.
If my subconscious considers these comments baggage, then I’m going to hold on tight right till the end of the line.
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