Living in Between Dreams

We drove down route 16, blasting Pink Floyd. Our trailer, filled with canoes and gear, bounced behind us. We were coming back from northern New Hampshire, where we paddled the Androscoggin river, Sean and I, along with six campers. A man was idling on the side of the road as we turned onto Route 28. He didn’t look as if he was going anywhere in particular. His thumb wasn’t raised. His hands rested on his hips.

“Jack Taps,” Sean casually muttered from the passenger seat.

“Who’s Jack Taps?” I said.

“Professional hobo.” Sean answered as we kept driving.

“Should we pick him up?” I glanced over and Sean was turned around, checking to see if we had room in the van. He looked at me and nodded.

I pulled over the van and U-turned recklessly to the other side of the road, hearing the trailer screech behind us. As we approached the stranger, I thought about how everyone has a unique perspective on life, that they only share in the form of little stories. I was hoping Jack Taps would tell me his perspective, plain and simple. No bullshit.

“Be good to kind people,” he would say, pushing his rounded sunglasses further up his nose. Or, “live without too many inhibitions” or, “here’s a quick remedy for hangovers. And make sure you love hard, man, you only live once.”

I pulled the van over to the shoulder, hearing the car vibrate under me. Jack Taps, my spirit guide, emerged with red, wrinkled skin on his face. He wore a tucked-in black T-shirt, fitted blue jeans, and black work boots.

“Jack Taps!” Sean called out the window. The man didn’t seem to know his own name. “It’s Shawn Lupa. I used to be your outfitter at Appalachian Mountain Sports. You’re Jack Taps, right?”

Suddenly it seemed to click. The man opened his eyes wide and looked as if he was finishing a delayed conversation that spanned 30 years. I began to realize that, in Jack Taps’ eyes, the whole world was one big conversation, to be continued, not to be singled out, obsessed over, depressed about, longing for your whole life. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to ask Jack about philosophy or life’s secrets. To Jack, there was no secret to life.

“I’m up here for the rest of the summer, moving around. I was out in Brattleboro, working at the food warehouse and picking apples,” Jack said. His voice was much quieter than I had imagined.

The conversation took over the silence of the van: one long stream of humanity pushing through the air. Daniel woke up in the backseat, 13 years old and wondering why there was a stranger two seats in front of him. But he kept quiet and listened with the rest of us.

Sean didn’t miss a beat: “how’s your gear doing? I see you got a new pack there. What does that weigh? 60 pounds?”

“Well I need a new frame because this one’s basically falling apart. I guess that’s just the way things go, you got to replace everything eventually. I just got a new sleeping bag and already put a hole in it. It’s the new lightweight material.”

They discussed Jack’s gear. the improvements, the way Jack lived up here in the winter without boots for weeks.

“I spent last winter in northern Idaho and boy was there snow,” Jack said, looking out the window.

“Jack hasn’t slept inside for 20 years.” Shawn bragged.

“44 years.” Jack corrected him.

When I saw, out of the corner of my eye, both of them looking towards me, I realized that I was now invited to join the conversation. I was asked to be a part of a greater consciousness where I would give up myself to the road, drop everything and be a Jack Taps of the world.

But I didn’t speak. I observed. I listened. I drove up and down hills of Route 28, listening to Jack Taps’ raspy voice. His words took me to an unsettling place. I was hit with a flashback, something that was erased from my memory. It was from a dream. I was being pushed up against the wall by a woman who I didn’t recognize. I was in love. I was free. I had already lived a whole lifetime in this dream. When I woke up in the morning, I looked for new experience but was plagued by a pressing feeling that I would never be fulfilled like I was in this dream.

As we drove, I thought about how dreams tease me with their reality, their truth, their freedom and unlimited imagination. I don’t fly in my dreams, or perform acts of comedy for the entertainment of my conscious judgement in the morning. I live truly in my dreams.

But when I’m awake, I can only observe people passing by and think, “sonder, sonder, sonder.”

When I’m asleep, I can be Jack Taps. I don’t worry about who I am. Nothing has reflexive implications and therefore I live with feelings of pure gold.

Otherwise, I live in between dreams, right in the middle of reality, scared to fall asleep and prove once again that reality exists beyond consciousness. I detest the morning where I must argue with my subconscious that the itching on my ankles is true, unsoiled reality. I must stuff my true desires into colorful sacks and empty them into social sorting bins.

I’m scared to die not because I’m worried I won’t live another day, but because I don’t know if death will be like dreaming. I don’t want to wake up and discovery I will no longer have my dreams, and the agency and composure that come with them.

I sit, picking at the scab on my knee that I’ve opened 36 times and it comes to me that life carries me in its breeze and sets me down without asking. It lets me sleep quietly with calm control before waking me once again and shaking that feeling of wholeness right out of my body and sending me on an endless search for myself, looking at passer-by, grabbing onto faces with tight claws to get a quick look in the mirror.

Now as I write, I feel myself dissipating into my dreams, scorning the day light that pins my eyes open.

Jack Taps suddenly addresses me, asking me where were going, and I remember that I’m driving the van. I’m leading us up and down hills out of my own will, or rather I’m dragging him in the wind, hoping to feel a sense of importance along the way, hoping to feel love.

I think deeply about myself to discover others. I write for others, hoping that they will search for me in themselves. I want to talk to Jack Taps but he’s already far away, making his way further and further into the heart of the country. So without him, I will sing. I will talk to others. I will walk trails, sleep with other people, talk to those who tell me about myself. I will dip naked into a waterfall, run fast through grassy fields. I will dance upside down or right side up. I will tell others what I feel and listen to how they dream. I will let myself dream awake and find my imagination zigzag into conversations. I will not be who I want to be but I will be what I am. I’ll itch and scratch and itch more until I bleed. I’ll do all this knowing that the moment we left Jack Taps at a rundown gas station off Route 28 and watched him walk off into the woods, I felt as if I was sleeping.