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Wednesday, June 03, 2015

The Peripatetic Philosopher announces:

I had a dream!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© June 3, 2015

NOTE:

Like everyone, I dream.  This is the first time I have recorded the dream I had last night on this blog.



The room was white, the bed white, the furniture white, the drapes on the windows were white, and the walls were white.  Everything was white.  He was dressed in white with a white shirt, white pants and black shoes.

Stepping into the hall, he noticed there were red, green and black lines on the floor going in every direction, designating specific destinies.

People in the halls had white, brown, black, red and yellow faces and were dressed in white jackets, green scrubs, or blue, teal, mauve, pink, or tan uniforms. 

He, following a pleated dress, then a white coat into a water closet, the dress lifting her pleated skirt revealing pantyless legs, the white coat dropping his pants and shorts around his shoes, the pleated skirt wrapping her legs around the white jacket’s hips, saying “Hurry!”  Then saying, “Faster, faster!”  The white coat obliging then shuddering, stopping. 

The pleated skirt unclasping her legs from his waist, standing up, straightening the pleats in her dress, leaving. 

The white jacket looking down at his limp Johnson, then his pants and shorts covering his shoes, standing there looking ridiculous for several moments, then lifting his shorts and pants in one scoop, buckling his belt, straightening his tie, running his hands through his hair, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror moving into the crowded hall.

Other white jackets moved through the automatic doors into the parking lot, where they took out cigarettes and began to smoke, laugh and relax.  The rumpled white coat joined them, feigning the excuse he had to take a piss.

He, walking to the street, taking cover under the umbrella of the bus stop cove to avoid the sun, joining others with brown and black faces but no white faces, people in work uniforms, people with tired faces, clutching to purses, paper bags, lunch buckets, people with slumping shoulders, showing little energy or inclination to talk wrapped tightly in their silence.

The bus came, everyone got on, it was full of brown, black, red and yellow faces.  He stood holding a supporting pole, watching the bus leave the white buildings, finding it fascinating as these white buildings receded from his view the bus negotiating the crowded streets with midday traffic, traffic associated with that din, noise that no one seemed to notice.

The bus went through neighborhoods with liquor stores, gas stations, strip malls, convenient stores, abandoned buildings, shabby apartments ubiquitous signs that told the story of the place.  A few got off and a few more got on.

Then the bus left the main streets and snaked its way through neighborhoods where more got off and no one got on, neighborhood alive with life, people working on cars, kids playing in the streets, old people sitting on porches, fanning themselves against the heat, kids on bicycles and skate boards, kids tossing baseballs, while in a park kids were playing basketball with hoops without nets seeming unaware of the midday heat, animals everywhere, dogs, cats, even a goat or two, many smiling happy faces, much laughter, much energy, but little attention paid to the brown, black, red and yellow faces as they got off the bus.  They seemed as invisible as he.

The bus completed its swing through the neighborhoods then speeded up and launched itself on the Interstate heading downtown, where the few that were still on the bus got off at the turnaround for the bus. 

Joining them, he became part of the cue at the street light and then flowed with the crowd across the street where people went off in several directions.  He joined the suits and dresses that moved jauntily to a large building and then stood in front of the golden doors to the massive elevator, entering with them as they rode up several floors, suits and dresses getting off, but suits and dresses still staying on, until everyone got off that was left, as did he. 

He, following one group of suits and dresses through the doors of a huge room with a maze of seemingly endless cubicles.  Suits and dresses split up entering the maze.  Every cubicle had a monitor that sparkled with flicking lights of information with dancing figures going across the screens. 

Suits and dresses immediately started talking to their machines in staccato that rose like an electronic hum that turned the noise into a kind of tribal music.  Mesmerized by this hum standing transfixed for several moments, a suit appeared carrying a small briefcase going to the bank of elevators, he joining.

Once on the elevator, the suit with the briefcase put a key into a panel and road from the thirty-fifth floor to the penthouse on the fortieth floor with expressed speed. 

The suit with the briefcase got off and approached an office with mahogany doors, pressed a button and was allowed to enter.  He spoke briefly to the dress seated behind a panel, and then passed into a gigantic office with windows twenty feet high overlooking the magnificence of the city, and then quickly moved with his briefcase to a large conference room adjacent to this office, and stood silently at attention next to security in a blue uniform waiting to be acknowledged.

A meeting was in progress.  Suits and dresses on both sides of the long mahogany conference table nodded like bobble head dolls as a plump little man with a round white face in a $10,000 suit commented as a huge electronic board on the opposite wall changed in its graphics with some arrows pointing up, some sideways, and many falling with accompanying information to explain these ambiguities. 

The plump suit acknowledged the suit with the briefcase, signaling for him to come forward, the suit with the briefcase pulling documents out of the briefcase which appeared, given the greedy expressions on the suits and dresses on both sides of the table, were anticipated bonuses for the quarter.

What transpired next was reminiscent of a child expecting ice cream for dessert but instead being given more vegetables. 

A child would have a tantrum but these suits and dresses know they can’t afford a tantrum so they look with hate and contempt at the plump little man in the $10,000 suit, retiring quickly to their favorite watering hole to drink themselves into what they construed as courage, but more resembled oblivion. 

While the suit with the briefcase consoled the suits and dresses with the company spin how great the future looked, the $10,000 suit retired into the huge office with the twenty foot high windows, camped himself behind a huge desk, taking a cigar out of a diamond embossed humidor, cut the end, lit it, and smiled as the rich aroma formed a cloud of contentment like halo over his head, pleased with himself knowing when he met with the Board of Directors they would even be more pleased with his leadership.

The suit with the briefcase, his assignment completed, leaves the huddle of swarming rage, enters the elevator, inserts his key into the panel and we travel at nearly mach speed to the street.

He goes to a quaint coffee shop and meets a pretty dress, while he moves with the cue to the bus stop, happily joining the brown, black, red and yellow faces.  The journey in reverse passing far more quickly than the earlier bus ride.

Suddenly, he feels restless and looks forward to some sleep, only to awake and find himself in bed in the white room with the white walls, white furniture, white curtains, and with a headache and having to pee.  He pees, takes two Excedrin gets back into bed to have a dreamless sleep.

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