Welcome to the mudroom, a joint commentary series of Rumble Strip, Vermont and the door yard.

Today, a commentary from writer, cellist, and political activist, Mark Estrin.

It's called Night Dreams of Another Life.

Welcome. Every now and then I am awakened at 3 a.m. by the sound of a shopping cart rattling past my house. No voices. Just a lonely, ghostly shopping cart.

It has that eerie sadness what he Guthrie sang about like that long

lonesome train a whistling down except it rattles the sky sky is dark, all other noise has ceased.

Wordsworth said it.

The holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration.

Except there's a shopping cart, rattling.

Who is out there pushing?

Who is searching the recycle bins and garbage for nickel cans and cast-off clothing?

Who must be up this early in the morning to ensure this meager catch.

In daylight hours I would probably revert to my social political thought chain,

the ghastly state of American capitalist politics,

the ripping away of the safety net from under the free fall of the poor.

But in the middle of the night, my thoughts often go to the amazing end of Schubert's song cycle, D'Vinterizer, the winter journey.

In Vinterizer, a lover spurned by his beloved, wanders out into the winter, an icy wind freezing his tears.

He has dreams and nightmares.

He longs for male, though he has no address. He communes with birds and beasts, he hallucinates.

There are many amazing and moving images in these 24 connected songs, but none is more mysterious and compelling than that of the last song,

Delayaman, the Herdy-Gurdy man. Of all the songs, it is the quietest and simplest a bare vocal line alternating with a little organ grinding refrain in the piano.

After all the wildness of nature and passion, this last strange encounter with an old man, outside

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