Rapid Transit (Dream)

Visited my (alternate) Winnipeg in my dreams again last night, as always, with somewhere to go. I wheel down to the end of Westminster, and turn right because the rapid transit bus embarkation station is adjacent to the Granite Curling Club.

With just  enough money to board, I leave my clothes and my wheelchair behind. Realizing I’m naked after passing through Confusion Corner, I think to myself, I better figure out where I left my clothes, and go back to the station I started from. This is somewhat difficult, naked and without wheelchair, without a transfer.

I’m helped, reluctantly, by one of the other passengers, to a seat in another sheltered bus stop on Pembina. After the good Samaritan scuttles away I look around and notice there is a lost and found, and a transit employee. I motion him forward and ask if there might be some clothes in his lost and found and collection. He puts a box on an old heavy clunky wheelchair and brings it next to the bench I’m sitting on and turns back to his wicket.

Relieved, I do find some very ill-fitting clothes, to cover my private parts, and grateful for the wheelchair. There are a few other items I consider taking, especially a very expensive looking cane with a carved lion head, and a good fit with my right palm. I decide, since it’s not mine, to leave it because I’m hoping to find all my stuff when I get back to where I left it.

I’m in a shelter that allows me to board the bus again without a transfer because I haven’t left the route. The bus is a major level lower than I am but each bus is raised on a hoist to boarding level. The apparatus malfunctions and the bus is thrown across the terminal and slammed down so hard the wheels fall off.  Fortunately I am well clear, and another bus is along shortly, and I roll in without incident.

I exit the bus at the terminal where I started this bus trip, struggling a bit with a heavier chair, and return where I started, but unlike T.S. Elliot, recognize it for the second time.  Fortunately everything I’ve left behind is there on a bench, though I have no memory of having undressed. The only thing missing is my wheelchair. Damn, should have taken the cane!

I change and discard my found pants and shirt, happy in my old clothes, even if they’re a little dirty and dusty. Big sigh in the utilitarian steel elevator taking me to street level, having to make do with a clunker. It’s a long way home.