Dream Diary: Train Trip Through the South

I'm going to try and write down my dreams now, as a way to keep track of them. Incidentally, I stole the title of the post from the hilarious comedian Marc Maron who now hosts a radio show called Morning Sedition (archives: here). There, that should be sufficient sucking up and promoting to let me get away with stealing my post titles.

So I'm on a train. I have lots of dreams about being on trains, and I never actually know where i"m supposed to be going. I look down at the ticket, and I can't read it, but it is very long and folded together like those SMT bus tickets. One of the ends is tattered and chewed up, and I can't figure out of it was the first part of the ticket wihch means I'm OK, or the last part which means I won't be able to get wehre I'm going.

I keep hearing the phrase 'When we get to Columbia, South Carolina" from poeple around me, and I start to think "oh hell, I'm in the deep South, how did I get here?" But despite the geographical setting, the train I'm in is truly modern and European-looking, and the scenery is a green blur out the window.

The people on the train also resemble what you would sooner see in Europe or Toronto than in the Southern US, many sophisticated looking people of ambiguous ethnicity, women travelling alone, all the stuff you wouldn't ever imagine in real life.

I try and ask what everyone is doing on the train, going to South Carolina but I don't remember getting any clear answers.

People keep talking to which 'clan' they belong to, and re-organizing their seating according to which ones answer the same when asked which one they blong to. But everyone looks the same, and dresses the same, and sounds the same, so it doesn't seem to be based on anything at all. Someone says to me "it's very important to find which clan you're in." But again, I have no idea why I would want to do this, or what mine would be if I had one. I didn't remember the specific names of any of these 'clans'.

There was no negative feelings that I could sense, just confusion on my part about what the deal was.

I've had similar dreams before about trains and train stations. The common theme seems to be being in an unfamiliar place and not knowing what my final destination is. Most of my dreams also involve me being in a very strange situation that everyone else thinks is perfectly normal and I'm trying to 'get' what it's all about.