A Dream That McCaffery's Supermarket Was Moving

Recently, I had a dream in which the McCaffery's supermarket at the Princeton Shopping Center was moving. I was in the store and noticed most of the shelves were bare. Were they remodeling? I asked a manager, and was told that they were moving to some distant intersection I didn't recognize but assumed was out on a strip development outside of town. I was understanding. No doubt they'd get more customers out on some busy road.

This is not a recurring dream, and it was unusual in being very matter of fact, lacking the improbable leaps in plot and logic that dreams usually display. One of the more instructive things dreams often leave behind is a feeling, and the feeling in this dream was of a stripping away of power. I rarely drive to McCaffery's. It's so close I can ride the bike, and bring a considerable amount of food home, stacked carefully in a large paper grocery bag in the kidseat. A backpack accommodates any overflow, and the occasional bag of dogfood fits well between the seat and the kidseat. At the cash register, I ask for one paper bag if I haven't brought one along, and put most of the food back in the cart loose, explaining that it all has to be repacked on the bicycle. Outside at the bicycle hitching post, memories of westerns in which the cowboy is carefully stowing provisions in those leather satchels on his horse come to mind.

The payoff, as I put canned food and flour in the bottom of the bag on the kidseat, saving lighter and more fragile items for the top, is a feeling of freedom and independence. Cars are wonderful tools, but they are deeply flawed, which when I need to use one makes me feel not guilt but a sense of mourning. They are so beautifully engineered, so smooth and quiet, that it's easy to forget the backstory, that the fuel cars use becomes steadily more difficult and risky to extract, and the consequences of their exhaust, though stripped of odor and smoke, are fraught with longterm peril.

But beyond that, the sense of empowerment a car can provide is also a form of dependence. The world most people wake up to every morning is scaled not to us and our capabilities, but to a machine's. Businesses, schools and friends are scattered and unreachable without contributing to a vast atmospheric experiment fraught with risk.

The layout of suburbs strips any kid under 16 of the power to reach school or friend without adult assistance, which in turn tethers adults to the steering wheel, shuttling kids hither and yon. This is not freedom but freedom lost. It means walking out the door knowing that you are helpless, your legs insufficient to the task of getting anywhere meaningful without the assistance of a machine. That's the bad dream that, living in a town like Princeton, with businesses, schools and many friends close by, we might dream but need not live.