to jump or not to jump

i am riding in a van with fourteen other people. the scenery slides by--some sort of wicked projection-- and instead being audience, i am frame. one. singular. passed by in a nanosecond while the trees and the rocks and the mountains watch this moving picture and chuckle along with the laugh track.

there is chatter and living expanding all around me, a nose is blown and a laugh is thrown and bounces like a ping pong ball against all corners of the van. i hear finger nails scratching on skin and low, staggered breathing like cows walking in twilight. my fingers stretch for the release handle on the door (release!). i feel every curve, let the cool plastic invade my too hot hands. i want nothing more than to pull it and float, very ghost like, very roger and hammerstein magical musical-like out of this cruel cubicle of forced human interaction. i want to depart, to flee, to run or fly or dive or evaporate, to transcend my place. i want to release.

but...reality is something altogether different from dreams. people don't fly in real life, they can't dive into an oblivion and not suffer great consequences. the chance of my leaping from the van into some wrinkle in time where i am teleported to some foggy lonesome beach in the Pacific Northwest is only an illusion, an illusion my mind steps into after my body has fallen and broken into a million little pieces. an illusion my mind believes to make those final moments seem more noteworthy and/or symbolic.

i'm not talking about suicide, so you can put down the phone and stop worrying. i'm talking about the difference between what i imagine and what i know. it's not from sadness that i think daily of jumping out of the van, it's from wondering if there's something i'm missing out there, it's from wondering if my place is prescribed, it's from wondering what really is an illusion and what really is reality.

sometimes i think i'm a single frame on a long reel of frames, believing i'm moving but in reality i'm stuck in the same story, replaying the same narrative. we all jump sometimes to break out of our stations. i think it's the only way to stay alive. so i ask myself every day after work as i take that long trip down mountain, to jump or not to jump? hrm...that is the question.