02 faraway stories

ari on the train

The doors close as an invisible voice announces “This is the L train direct to 125th Street. There will be no stops in between”. It’s 2017 and I’m still living in New York City. Nothing makes sense in this setting especially because the interior of the subway train looks like the inside of a bus, and I can see the evening lights of the city through the windows. I must’ve gotten on the wrong train. Now I’m going much further than I need, and I’ll have to come back downtown. Everyone else on the train is cloaked, sitting like shapeless shadows. I don’t remember where exactly I’m trying to get to, but I know that I’m going to be very late, and I get this dreadful feeling like I’m going to miss something very, very important. As I’m resolving myself to this fact, I hear again on the speaker a different voice say “Ari Li… please come up to the front”.

“The train is soon arriving at Yiwai Station. Passengers traveling to Mudide should exit and transfer to the TRA line”.

I wake up to the announcement in a fright, almost knocking over the lukewarm cup of coffee on the seat tray in front of me. Did someone call me to the front of the train? I glance nervously around. The man next to me has his eyes closed, and the other passengers haven’t moved. No one seemed to have noticed my convulsion.

“We will arrive at Yiwai Station in 10 minutes. Doors will open on the left.”

As hills of green roll past outside the window, I slowly register my surroundings once again.

The eastern coast flashes past on my left. Long stretches of open fields speckled with wildflowers are occasionally interrupted by teases of sparkling, teal ocean and villages or towns where we pull into mostly empty stations. A few passengers get off at these stops, but like me, most people still on the train are headed to Mudide, the biggest city in the South known for its fishery products and ecotourism.

I gather my things as I replay the dream in my head. It’s one I’ve had a few times now since I first left New York, but the details change a bit every time. Sometimes no one else is on the train at all, and sometimes it’s afternoon instead of evening. This is the first time hearing the second voice calling my name. Though I had been caught off guard by it, the voice had been gentle and womanly - the kind that makes you want to lean in and continue listening. She sounded a bit like Laurie, but more high-pitched. I wish I hadn’t woken up so quickly so that I could verify who it was.

Recently, Laurie’s been getting frustrated with me too, and I don’t blame her. I check the last message on my phone from her:

“I watered your plants again… but u are still coming back right?? where are u now???”

As my friend of 10 years and neighbor in the city, she’s the only one back home who I’ve at least vaguely confided in with my plans, or really, lack thereof. At first, I would tell her each time I went to a new place, sending pictures and lengthy audio messages to supplement, and she had been supportive of my over-extended solo trip, but it’s become more and more difficult justifying even to her why I am extending it yet another week.

I think that I’m finally processing the gravity of events from the past few months, and it’s been affecting my sleep. I’ve been dreaming more at night and waking up anxious to be on the move. That’s not to say I regret leaving the city or anything there behind. In fact, I’ve become more certain of that decision the further I’ve gone from it. Each new town I’ve stayed in has made me feel that I can never go back. So instead, I go on to the next, averaging three or four days in each place.

Still, I wasn’t originally planning on leaving. I know it’s an awfully selfish desire - the itch to just go somewhere. It’s hard to explain, but it makes more sense when I think about how I’ve always liked to be in transit, especially if the commute is meant to be long, like an airplane flight or train ride.

I used to think that this was a universal itch, and everyone else was also resisting the desire to just go somewhere out of a sense of responsibility or attachment to people and material things. I realized this was not the case when it became a point of contention that resulted in my last breakup. We used to get into fights because he couldn’t understand why I’d get so restless from routines and consistency. Every so often, I’d want to move furniture, move apartments, move cities, and he’d ask me “What are you running away from?” But I couldn’t help it - the more I stayed in one place, the stronger the impulse became to drop everything and start anew.

The trigger that surfaced the itch in full force was when my therapist told me I should consider taking a vacation back in January. It was as if the worst of winter had sank into my shoes, and still I was dragging them around the city, cold and sopping, to the office and back home and to the office again. After the last of the holiday sparkle had passed, every day felt colorless. I realized then that I couldn’t remember the last time I had really loved something.

It was simple enough to label my affliction as burnout, take three weeks off work, and book a flight to Hanoi (it was the first page in my only coffee table travel book). It’s been three months since.