Safe

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safe

It was a strange and vivid dream that I remembered clearly when I awoke. My neighbor Andy was driving me someplace in a small jeep-like vehicle. He was going very fast over rugged bluffs and downward towards the coast. Whenever we hit a bump, I was lifted from my seat; it was very much like riding a bucking bronco. I don't know why Andy was in such a hurry...maybe the surf was really great that day...but I finally asked him to let me out and I would find my own way back.

I turned in the direction of what I thought was Sacate Canyon, but when I ascended the top of the bluff and over to the other side, nothing was familiar.In fact, the place I looked out onto was oddly urban, and I surmised that we had been a whole lot further down the coast than I originally thought. I found my way to a junction of two wide paved roads: Hope Boulevard and Hope Avenue, which formed a triangular area called Hope Island.

Well, I thought, if you are going to be lost, Hope Island is certainly a hopeful-sounding place to have landed, even if a tad cliché. My immediate strategy was to simply call Monte, ask him to find the location on google maps, and come and get me, but since this expedition had started out as a ranch drive with Andy, I did not have a cell phone, money, or any identification on me. I was a nameless, penniless stranger stranded on Hope Island.

Conveniently, there was a man in pink velour sweat pants standing around selling bagels, balloons, and theater tickets. (What can I say? It was a dream.) He had access to an old-fashioned office phone, the kind with buttons that light up, and he grudgingly let me use it, but when I reached Monte (who was somehow home with Miranda, who was somehow about twelve years old again) he was unexpectedly resistant to come and rescue me.

"You got yourself there," he said, "maybe you should try to figure it out."

Back in wide-awake real life a day later, Monte and I were driving to Los Angeles where he had a business meeting, and I described this dream to him. I like to figure out what my subconscious is trying to tell me, and I asked him if he had any ideas.

"Is it not obvious?" he said. "Andy represents your neighbors and community, your own familiar world. But you've gotten pulled away from home by the demands of a certain epic crisis, and by overwhelming problems you feel called upon to help with, and you know what? You're basically on your own there. It's a very clear dream. Heavy-handed, even. You can't save those people and I can't save you. Save yourself. Draw some boundaries. Reclaim your lost identity."

Wow. He's blunt, but he makes his point.

So anyway, while Monte went to a meeting in some big building on Wilshire Boulevard, I had an hour or so to wander around Los Angeles. I randomly chose a direction, strolled a few blocks, and promptly came upon a street called...you guessed it...Hope!

Talk about deja vu.  It was in a run-down neighborhood and seemed to culminate in a vacant area, maybe a parking lot, not much to see. I heard voices carrying from a block or two away, repetitious and sing-song. The source was a very orderly picket line with placard-carrying workers marching back and forth, chanting in unison, and I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but the sound of it was carrying across the empty streets, bouncing against buildings, and echoing back. It was haunting and eerie, dream-like.I wandered some more.

I don't know L.A. and I can't tell you exactly what neighborhood I was in, but it was someplace in the old  part of downtown, and many of the buildings were shabby and in disrepair. I saw the dilapidated marquees of formerly fancy theaters, and brick facades with the faded lettering from long-ago advertising, and on one tall wall the painted message "Jesus Saves."

In the distance I saw a skeletal tower rising above rooftops, resembling some Gothic ruin, and as I paused to look up at it, an African-American woman who was passing by smiled at me and said, with a tone of certainty and sincerity, "I just want you to know God loves you. Don't you worry. Have a good day."

On that very street corner there was an old lock, vault, and burglar alarm store. On one side it said "security" in big block letters, yellow on green, and there was an enormous yellow key, very reassuring, a key you'd never lose, and  biggest of all, at the front entrance, was just this one word: SAFE.  

And of course, my frame of mind being as it's lately been, I wondered if all of us aren't simply looking to be saved or be safe, really, in one way or another. I remembered even childhood games of chase and tag, and how we would arbitrarily proclaim a certain doorway, sewer grating, or  traffic light as safe, then run to it and touch it. Maybe sometimes, out of breath, we would fully lean into it, relieved and secure, sheltered in the framework of our own invented rules.

And yet of course we're never safe. We find ourselves in alien landscapes, wondering how we got there, yearning for what was. Sometimes the very worst things happen, to us or other people, and if to others the trick (as I am having to learn) is knowing how much and how little we can offer. Maybe we call a time out, or claim a safe zone, or  retreat within, or take a leap of faith. We polish off our compass, but it's mostly trial and error.

And if  hope turns out to be a vacant island, well, at least it's a place to park and get our bearings.