Trains

When I am troubled, I dream of trains. I know this because I keep a dream diary for vivid dreams and a personal diary to write out all my thoughts. There's a correlation between the times I dream of trains with the times when I'm troubled. For the most part, I am turning over a problem in my brain. Dreaming of a train - being on a train, waiting for a train, seeing a train - means that I have come to the climax of that thought. A solution may not come from the dream - in fact I don't think it ever has - but the train dream means a decision has been cemented in my mind and that there will soon be closure.

The last time I dreamt of a train (5th October), I was trying to figure out what I should do with an unsavoury snippet of knowledge about a colleague of mine. Just after that dream the problem pretty much resolved itself and in the meantime I had decided not to do anything about the knowledge I had acquired.

Last night I had a train dream. My boss and a couple of people from work were at an outdoor shooting range shooting totem poles of world leaders and we had to catch the train, but we missed it. The train station was down a grassy embankment and the train was already moving away from the station by the time we started running down the embankment. My boss was philosophical about it. He sat down with his bags and said "there'll be another one". We decided to stay the night in a nearby village. My sister was there and the hostel was in Mexico. The toilet flushed into the indoor swimming pool.

The next day we headed out to the train station again, but we were on the wrong side of the tracks to where people were boarding so we just jumped into a semi-open carriage that already contained a few people in it. The passengers had to move their luggage so we could fit. A ticket inspector came past and I asked him whether we needed a ticket to Hornsby and he said we needed to buy them at the station, but he passed us by. Soon after, a lady entered the carriage (from the outside...) and sold us tickets in the form of stamps. The stamps cost $3 and could be used all the way to Melbourne. Then I woke up.

I've been turning a problem over and over in my mind since Friday. The problem is this: a friend from high school, one of my best friends from high school, recently got married. Previously she hinted that I may be asked to be one of her bridesmaids, however, cut to the year 2006 and I'm not even on the guest list. Hmm. I haven't seen her for 18 months, but not through want of trying. I invited her to two birthday parties, a farewell party, a welcome home party and made several attempts to arrange a catch-up, to which her constant refrain was always "I'm really busy at the moment...". I also sent her a postcard while I was overseas and bought her a small gift, which I ended up posting to her instead of handing it to her in person as I'd imagined, sent her a Christmas card, a birthday card and offered her a job at my current work place because she is an expert at chemistry and we need chemistry people.

Two questions have been troubling me, 'why wasn't I invited?' and alternatively, 'why didn't she just tell me she didn't want to invite me?' I can accept not being invited but it takes just two minutes to type up an email that says "hey, I know we've been really good friends in the past but we've drifted apart these past few years and I just don't find room for you in my life any more". And I would understand.

This morning I had a train dream. I know what I must do to close this matter.