Mission City - V - Northeast Rail Yard

As I have written previously, the Mission City is not in time nor is it in a place. The frequency of visits have allowed me to gain some mental picture of how it is arranged in very general terms.

To the north and east of the center of town (downtown is west-northwest of the center) is a small rail yard-- a track diverges northbound from the single track mainline which runs along the eastern edge of town. That divergent track then runs trough a chain-link gate into a yard (apparently with several more branches diverging from the one). I have not been very far inside of that fence, simply because only one of my missions has had me there-- and that one began with me just inside of the fence, looking back at a large steam locomotive chugging southbound to exit through the gate, very much as the picture above shows.

As an aside, here, my great grandfather worked for the Southern Pacific all his adult life in Houston. I recently found his SP buttons in my mothers attic as well as a couple of family passes for free travel on the SP line. I am beginning to wonder if these vision dreams have some "ground of being" connection to family. That reminds me to include, later, a little about my experiences of the recently departed. I promise, they are not ghost stories-- at least not in the traditional sense. Anyway...

There were several others with me-- this time, those others were following my lead. The longer we waited inside of that fence, where we ought not to have been in the first place, the worse our chances of getting to the residential district where I was to take them became-- a "safe house" is what came to mind.

There is something about the safe house, and about the neighborhood that I know, in the back of my mind. I am not sure, but I believe it is near, or perhaps is the house my family lived in when I was born. We moved to Fort Worth from that Richardson, Texas, home when I was about nine months old.

The safe house is a place for the safety of those I am leading there, but not for me. It is very much the Cottonwood neighborhood in Richardson, Texas, due west of Richardson High School. I used to pass by that neighborhood (in real life) on my way to and from school when I was just beginning my sophomore year. At that time, I would have been fourteen years old. The trees grew so tall and thick, that the neighborhood seemed to be perpetually in shadow to me, but I also only passed along side of it early in the mornings and in late afternoon. It was always quiet, and oddly devoid of people when I passed. Something... something about it was powerful, and not in a good way. Something about it was alluring-- like a mystery to be uncovered, and one which I wanted uncovered.

In the vision dream, a similar alluring mystery combined with a bit of dread was associated with that little neighborhood. The sense I had was that these people with me, some of them children, all of them young, would be met by another in league with me as we drew near. What comes to mind is the French Resistance of World War II. That is, that there were cells, and this was a mission which required me to pass off those with me (refugees?) to another cell whose members did not know me. If you are not familiar with the French resistance organization, perhaps you have read Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?



I did not know from where these people, now counting on me, had come. Perhaps they arrived by train, perhaps riding a freight, or by walking, or maybe simply staged there at the edge of the warehouse along the western edge of the railroad yard.

If I had known then, what I know now, there was a much safer way to get them into that neighborhood then the way I took them. That way would have been far more clandestine, and left us with only a few blocks to go out in the open. I did not know, at that time, any other way. I still do not know why the safer and covert route was not made known to me and thus available to us on this particular mission but I do speculate.

My guess is that my cell is directed by the cell controlling the long stretch of property that rubs from the railroad on the east to just short of downtown on the west side. That stretch, only a block thick but over mile long begins as warehouses, then becomes interspersed with a few offices and at the far west end, a few residential homes, some converted to offices, but one, (the last one) being my "home." I use home as an expression here, as it is not where I live, but where I once lived-- and that structure is represented by various places I actually have lived in my past-- morphing from one to another even within the same mission. More on that in another post.

I speculate, sometimes, that there are cells, each containing a few people; but I am not so much in a cell as I am single extension of one or more of the top cells. It does not bother me not knowing. Obviously it is safer not to know-- maybe not safer for me, but safer for everyone, over all, to know as little as possible about whom is involved and about what others do. There is too good of a chance that anyone I might decide is trustworthy, will turn out not to be, and many could get hurt. I no longer want to know-- if I ever did want to.

Come to think of it, I never have wanted a partner in this work, albeit, I seem to enjoy a mission more when I have one. Not this time. This time, it is simple. I have no idea what the real threat is, and therefore have no idea of the safest way to help them. All I know is that we need to get out of the yard, get to the neighborhood quickly. It seems logical that to get there without being seen by anyone is a good assumption;, but before we get anywhere, to get my young group out of that gate without getting hit by a train is my task.

I make a quick judgment and motion all of them to follow. I move along the warehouse wall to the fence post to which the swinging chain-link gate is attached, and dart through the gate and back toward the warehouse to allow those behind me room to clear the gate post before the train gets there and makes it too narrow a gap to pass. I cannot tell tell how long the train is; but, if it is very long, it could be several minutes before we could get through the gate. So I decided to risk splitting us up in hopes of all of us getting through the gate before the locomotive steamed through it. All of these with me are compete strangers. I don't even know what it is they know, but they have obviously been told to keep quiet, try not to draw attention to themselves, and stay close to me. I turn to look for stragglers, and see how many had made it through the gate as there were only a few seconds to safely make it out.

To my surprise all of them were gathered up just behind me, waiting for me to move on. It occurred to me that I was probably not the first leg of this journey for them, and wondered how long they have been on the run. They were clueless as to what to do, but experienced at being clueless-- just like me. I have never been given a mission by an associate. The missions are "in my head" when I find myself on one. Sometimes, almost at all times, I may not know what the whole mission contains but find I somehow know what to do when the next element is faced (another hint at the spiritual meaning of these events).

We walked south along the track for about a thousand yards, then turn west on one of the streets which ran directly to the neighborhood. There was still a mile to go, yet it seemed to me that we were at the intersection to which I knew I was to take them to in no time. I have no recollection of the transaction of my charges to someone else's charge, just that my charges were delivered and accepted, wordlessly, I think.

I headed north from there, toward "home." Downtown was in sight to my left. Odd thing about that downtown
-- I always seem to get lost on my way there, or end up there when I was not intending to. Downtown seems to be only approachable from the corner of the eye so to speak. Like a burning bush. But "home" was my destination.

That vision dream would occur the next day. It would be the longest, and most ambiguous to me. The more recent the vision dream, the less meaning it presents; yet it is when the sense of meaning is strongest. Something like tasting a new food or drink with a strong flavor. You are aware of the flavor, but it takes some time to identify or qualify it, decide if it is good or bad to you.

There is no chronology that I am keeping to in these. I know the order which the came to me, and the "home" sequence is distinctly connected as a second part of this trek from the rail yard to the neighborhood and my journey "home." It will not, however, be the next post-- perhaps not the one after that.