The Pure Life of Dreams

June 22, 2022October 22, 2022

A Work Trilogy: Interviewing for a New Opportunity

I had a bit of time so I thought I would go see the hippos.

Through the window I could see a snout on a table but that was it. To the right was the door to get in but when I knocked no one answered. I looked again through the thick plate glass. Maybe I should knock louder, so I did.

And the door slid open.

Inside the small room there was a young woman who tended the animals, and a boy and his dad. I reached over and petted the hippo, stroked his furry grey back. Then after the woman lifted the young hippo gently and lowered him to the floor, the four of us observed him slide around on his belly. His feet were thick wide flippers and he waddled across the slippery tiles. Ungainly he looked, like a platypus.

“What brings you here?” the woman asked.

“I had a bit of time,” I replied, “So I thought I would stop in at the zoo.”

At the back of the enclosure and in another room, there was a place to order a drink. I stepped through to see a few people milled around the bar. And a man who had just flown in made me his friend.

“Let me buy you a beer,” he said as he backslapped me. But I did not have the time, I thought.

“Ok,” I said reluctantly. He was from Belgium and was fat with a white shirt untucked. But he was friendly. So I drank his beer.

And then once I’d done that, he said, “Another?”

This time I really didn’t have time, but before I could say no, he’d got a new round anyway.

He stepped away to talk to someone else and when he returned to the bar, I said, “No really, I have no time.”

I gave him a 20 dollar bill to get out of there.

I was going to walk and I was already late. Besides, the boy had left his father and was following me, was holding me up. What it really the same boy?

“Hey, I don’t want you to follow me.” I said down to him, but if I cut through UCL I would make it in time for the interview.

The day was sunny, bright. Better to walk than to to take the train, I thought, so I set off on a brisk clip through the unversity grounds.

Where was this place? I could see it on the map but when I reached the square with the gold buildings, with the café that sold cakes, that was right next door to the office, I still could not be sure it was the right place.

Koros, I think, was the name of the company; and it did not quite look the same as on the map but that was surely it. It had the right logo, a black trident on the gold trim that lined the square, so it had to be it.

And then the boy was still following me, so what was I going to do with him?

He was already feisty and when we went through the café, I wanted to get rid of him there and then, but he still refused to go. Instead he would hang closer when I tried to leave.

I could buy him a pastry but that would make him worse for the sugar rush.

Maybe he could stay in the lobby of the office. Then I remembered Adam V knew me already and would probably be fine with him.

If the boy could just sit down for two minutes, it might be ok.

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

June 15, 2022October 22, 2022

A Work Trilogy: More Blah Blah in the Auditorium

I go to the auditorium for the latest announcement from the engineering leadership.

It is in a new hall in dark red cloth colors but as I enter it is very difficult to see empty spots across the dark rows of seats. Shadowy figures fill the auditorium and I bump into a person in an aisle seat that I thought was empty.

June 2, 2022October 22, 2022

Mother Is Doing Fine

I found a double bladed axe on the ground. It was long, almost half my height and next to it was another shorter axe with four small blades, with points instead of curves and each perpendicular to the other. They did not look like they had been used; there was no blood on either of them, but I thought I should return them to the police anyway.

May 24, 2022October 22, 2022

Spies in a Bunker in Prague

I am in Budapest, only it does not look like Budapest because I have been there; so maybe I am in Prague because I have not been there.

I am in a deserted apartment, more like a bunker, but real high up, above the cityscape. And even though the bunker has only two main rooms, the rooms have strange angles and steps up to the lookout posts. Like a bunker the rooms have grey white walls and the windows are glassless but have metal grills.

The spies were just with me, a man and woman drinking whisky from crystal glasses. They poured it from a pear shaped decanter with a glass stopper.

And once they left, they put the glasses on a mantelpiece.

Then an agent came through the door and said, “They were here weren’t they?” But I didn’t answer and he went room to room looking for evidence.

There was nothing in the rooms but he found the decanter and holding it by the neck said, “Yes, the evidence is here,” He lifted it up for me to see.

“You should have worn gloves then,” I pointed out, “as you’ve just destroyed the evidence.”

I thought he was an idiot but he left with the decanter, and the couple returned.

Through curlicue bars on the windows I am trying to point my camera at the view of the city, the way the buildings slope down below me and then back up the other side of the valley high up above.

At the bottom of the valley is a nest of residential houses tightly packed, but in front are ugly white warehouses and I’m trying to angle the camera to avoid the warehouses and focus on the houses, with the remaining buildings on the opposite slope as a background. I would do a panoramic shot, except the bars would show up fuzzy in the foreground.

We walk outside and down to a balcony in front of the bunker.

“You have to see the nightly spectacle,” the woman tells me. Sure enough, a huge aircraft with multiple stories, like a space ship, five layers of oval windows pinpricks of light on black walls, comes up from the right side of the valley, against the dusky sky. Up over the balcony it flies, slowly, mere meters away, angled torchlights scanning the valley. It is followed by a white F-2, a familiar pointed nose. The plane slow rolls for show, and then is followed by the chopping sound of a Chinook.

“The city has this every night!” the man says.

I want to get a better photo and follow the couple alongside a stream that curves through the balcony. A black iron grinder crosses the stream and the man goes first, the woman hangs back. He steps onto the girder but then changes his mind and steps into the water. Ankle deep in clear water, he sploshes over to the other side.

I follow but want to stay on the girder, so I step gingerly onto it.

The girder is shiny, and I want to keep going, but it is slippery and I don’t want to look like a fool in front of the planes and the crowds watching.

Photo from Piqsels

May 15, 2022October 1, 2025

Love from a Previous Life

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Image by Juri Kivit from Pixabay