Choices
/
In the dream I am standing in front of the kiosk trying to buy my train ticket. The machine is becoming uncooperative. It is being demanding and starts to ask me personal questions. The voice is mechanical and clipped, “Do you like to sleep in a bed or on the ground outside?" I become momentarily bewildered, a group of spectators begins to gather. My father pops into my mind in his Swanndri and blue running shorts and his woolly hat popped unceremoniously on the top of his head. I remember how he would go for days off track in the Urewera National Park and then come home to a hot bath, the love of the warm carpet underneath his feet and his bed, where he could look out to sky and ocean. “Both,” I yelled hastily. Machines don’t like such an answer, I should know this, it’s a or it's b, never both. It swallows the ticket. More spectators gather. I am reminded of the multichoice questions in School Certificate, the absurdity of choosing between a, b, c, d, or e. I remember those questions – which one is correct? And then seeing all these different spellings for February and suddenly not remembering how to spell February as they all looked rather good spellings. These absurd momentary reflections are not helping, the machine is looking obdurate. I wake up ticketless.
One would expect a German ticket kiosk to respond in a logical fashion and give a ticket, but my experience is they have their own logical process that seems to act curiously of its own accord, therefore I approach the ticket kiosk with a sense of calm determination. This time I have dragged Ramona along in case it decides to be fickle. I am in Würtzburg and am catching a train to Frankfurt Airport, my destination is the Isle of Arran in Scotland. Over and over again the machine won’t let us buy a ticket. It must be me, I think, I didn’t answer that question correctly. Finally, Ramona finds an official ticket officer and together with another two of them they approach the machine. It’s starting to look uncannily like my dream. Maybe there will be a group of onlookers as well. Maybe I will choose one answer, this time, maybe I will be good. It turns out the train I want to catch has been cancelled, I have 6 minutes to catch an alternative so I am running and yes I make it and I sit back on the slow train to Frankfurt Main Hbf, following the Main river, village by village.
I am thinking about my conversation with Ramona where we discuss the notion of choices – particularly the choices we make that arise from a conditioned response. We talk about all the small moments, the choices we make on a daily basis that often lead us away from our creative work or alone time. This conversation leads us on to the nature of balance, how to attend to the needs of others without losing sight of our own path. I wonder about where I am going today, it makes an interesting journey to choose to go to a place I know nothing about and have no reason but curiosity to go there.
More people crowd on the train as it gets closer to Frankfurt. People are standing, looking out. I think about those decisions we make that we berate ourselves over, if only I had stayed, or if only I had gone, if only I had waited, if only I had given, if only I had been patient, and the decisions we make that we cannot bear to look at, and the mind goes round and round and up and down, and the people go round and round and up and down and look out the window.
At Frankfurt Main Hbf, I disembark and catch another train to the airport, making sure I am on the a, c or d part of platform 103. But not b. I am getting the hang of multiple choice. At Frankfurt Airport I face another machine for my boarding pass. It has a number of multiple choice questions like What kind of passport do you have? I stare at this and randomly choose an answer, the machine seems to know what kind of passport I have, so, as I have chosen the wrong answer, it asks, Are you sure? I say, ‘no,’ it flips me back to the multiple choice so I choose another answer and the machine is happy with this answer. I am happy too as it gives me my boarding pass. I feel like I have just passed an exam and I am ready for the machine that will give me a ticket for my bag, and now through security and the long journey to my gate Z16. I think about whether we actually ever really have choices. I am reminded of that feeling inside our bellies that goes 'no you can’t do that’ or ‘go forward here’ and then the kind of inner fear we have as we try to compromise, trying to reason with the inner that wells up stronger and stronger in us, until we catapult ourselves into what we knew we had to do all along and wishing we had done it a little more gracefully. Yes, we know in our bodies when our inner responds to a situation and we know how frightening this can be because it goes against our conditioning, and often, cultural conditioning.
As I sit at the gate realizing there is only another 5 minutes to board I am aware that there are only about four people sitting lackadaisically – I stare at the boarding pass, I read in small letters 'Your gate number may change.' I open my phone to my emails and sure enough, there are five emails from Lufthansa airline, “Your new gate is Z18" followed by another email with gate number Z16 and another Z13 and yet another A21 and finally Z21. I stand up, grateful that I hadn’t been running from A to Z and following the information of my last email I go to Z21, just in time to board.
Sometimes we choose and then we can’t go back, and sometimes we sit there, forever, at the crossroads as we angst, and then accidentally run into the path through a series of events which we didn’t seem to think at all about. Just as Rosenkreutz did when he chased the raven to free the dove only to find himself already on the path, unable to go back.
Arriving in Glasgow, the passport control is mechanized and the line I follow has a large list of flags that are acceptable. For a moment I am unable to remember what the New Zealand flag looks like, could that be it – the union jack and the southern cross, I feel a pretender as I slip through under an obsolete flag.
I take up the taxi driver’s offer to take me to Ardrossan instead of the train station, there is now speed required to catch the 6pm ferry to the Isle of Arran. I make this choice, after a juggling in my mind of money, time and ease. Sometimes I admit it’s a random affair. Indecision is one of those freeze moments, riddled with fear underneath often simple choices. I play with words a whole caboodle of indecision like shilly-shallying, vacillating, teetering, humming and hawing, and in Scottish swithering. I think I did some swithering around the taxi driver, finally pouncing on my decision as if it might evade me.
It is raining and cold by the time I get on the ferry. As the ferry crosses the Firth of Clyde I watch the mist-enshrouded hills of Arran come closer, there is an exquisite light falling across the clouds, the sea is rolling and a gannet dives close by. The journey has been worth it. At the hotel I lug my suitcase up the stairs and fall onto my bed, I look out at the hills and mist that beckon to be walked in. ‘Both’ is the answer I mumble as I lie in the soft bed, seeing myself walk into those hills with my tent in the morning.
