The Pure Life of Dreams

May 5, 2023June 17, 2023

Cheerleaders for the New Guy, Join the Fun!

The office’s older parts of the building, red orange stone arches and brick walls interplay with modern smoky blue grey glass facades, overlooking green rolling hills. I am at a new place of work, or a new company or a company that acquired us.

And I have a desk in Lesley’s office at the end of the building, only she does not look like Lesley. She is sporting a brown, almost bronzed, bob.

They need to reassign me as the location is temporary.

When one man comes in, and hangs out in an alcove formed by the stone arch in our office, and starts smoking a cigarette, I realize it is probably time to move on.

Another man has also been promoted and they are reallocating spaces. Outside on a grassy knoll there is a whole fanfare for him. I walk out to where a group of workers are gathered, and in the center of the circle, is one of the higher-ups.

She is dancing like a cheerleader with angular thrusts of hips and high energy fist pumps to welcome the new recruit to management. She is dressed in a gold bodysuit which spangles against a clear blue sky backdrop.

I could never get that enthusiastic about work. It must be exhausting.

Behind both her and the gathering, a few young men in aqua colored tunics who were going to a football game, join in.

They have plastic water spray bottles in their hands. They make a dance out of the sprayers, fist pumping them too.

“I come from a foreign state,” I explain, “so I never understood what you guys do.”

The jocks choreograph claps and sprays from their bottles. Their tunics remind me of the car wash guys over on Connecticut. Then one of the jocks aims his sprayer at me, and jets water at my hair.

Instead of joining the hoopla, I try to get my new place aligned. One of the watching crowd tells me to ask HR or building facilities, but I cannot use some-one’s influence.

“I shared an office,” I start to explain, but then I cannot remember Lesley’s name. Was it Pamela or Nicole?

How can I get an office if I cannot even remember who I shared the previous one with?

“No, you will not be able to get an office.”

“Well I need a window seat, next to a window. Bright sun.”

One of the jocks pulls out a silver pointer from his back pocket, then he points it south to show the best sun facing location.

“Yes, we may have something for you!” he shrieks.

“But it needs to have sun,” I repeat. Then I add hopefully, “and be a window seat.”

Main photo by Conrad Poirier, pioneer of photojournalism in Quebec, via Picryl. Miracle sign photo by Dayna Bateman via Flickr.

April 20, 2023May 2, 2023

Attacked by a Drone in the Old Fort

Attacked by drones in the old Moroccan fort.

Siobhan, Liam, Lizzie and I went on holiday to Morocco or a place like that and after we had arrived and settled into our hotel, we went wandering around the souk. It was nearby and still filled with people in colorful costumes so we took lots of candid pictures.

The souk was quite open plan but still dusty, and had rich ornate rugs swung over the wooden frames of the stalls to protect the shoppers from the sun’s dusty glare.

The locals’ costumes were many striped, in reds and orange, golds and blues, the colors of the rainbow, and you had to be fast to get the pictures but I played with the iPhone buttons instead of the app button and snapped them really fast. I was not even looking to frame each picture so that even if a head got in the way I would still snap it.

I looked at one photo and sure enough I had frozen it in time. The focused head of a man captured through a blur of people. I was proud to have gotten a good picture just like the kids showed me.

And later on we walked over to an old fort which had a broken wall and an old blue door; you could walk around the right side of the wall, to the other side without opening the door. Behind the wall was a moat and a series of steps that went down to the water line and then came back up again to the rear side of the door. And intersecting the moat was another wall that acted as a bridge, that you could walk across the top of, that was quite wide and able to accommodate all four of us side by side.

We walked along the bridge and a drone flew by; and the drone was bowl shaped and black with a yellow trim up by its wings. It hovered briefly over the water before snapping out of sight.

And once we turned back and were returning to the fort’s front wall we noticed the water level had risen, perhaps because of the tide, and the drone was back again. This time it was a bit more menacing. It flew closer to us, just missing Lizzie and I, and then it went after Siobhan who had walked ahead. She was up by the intersection where the bridge and the wall’s steps met.

Siobhan ducked down to avoid the swoop of the drone and dived into the water which now covered the steps. Then she surfaced where the steps rose up close to the door. Only her head and right arm visible, she was holding onto the top step, but also she looked dazed.

Liam and I ran back along the path and I thought to walk down the first set of steps and up the second to where she was. But then I would have gotten my camera wet because all but the top steps were covered in water. I didn’t think it would survive that amount of time in the moat.

Then Liam had an idea. “Why don’t we try the door from the front?”

And so we walked back around the wall. And the door was old with chipped paint and we weren’t sure we were allowed to open it. I turned the heavy round silver knob of the door and we stepped through.

No one stopped us.

“Good idea, Liam,” I acknowledged as I closed the door behind us.

Next to the door sat an old cart leaning with its wheel barrow handles on the path. It was right next to where the steps began, where Siobhan held on.

But there was no trace of Siobhan.

A few bathers were paddling out in the moat but she was not one of them. We looked out across the water, and briefly one woman in the same dark brown bathing suit as Siobhan surfaced, but she had long dark brown hair.

Perhaps she had slipped unconscious while holding onto the step.

We peered into the water but it was murky and there was no way to see anything deeper than a few feet. And this time I thought to dive down to see if she had drowned.

Then Liam cried out.

“Mama,” he wailed in a plaintive voice.

Photo from Wallpaper Flare

March 9, 2023March 9, 2023

Midnight and it’s Raining at the Movie Theater

Siobhan and I are seeing a midnight movie, a film noir, but it’s been going on a long time, and I have work in the morning. And the other moviegoers have put up their umbrellas because of the light drizzle. I can only see the movie through the translucent skins of black canopies.

“Hey!” I complain to the people in front of me.

And when it gets to the third hour Siobhan says we should go. It’s disappointing but it could easily go another hour, so we get up to go.

As we leave it seems that others think the same, and everyone is piling out toward the elevators. The lobby is muted browns fifties retro with extended black leather benches like the hotel in Jamal Ahmad. We cannot take the first elevator as it is too full, but we will get on the second.

We wait in the lobby, and I picture playing with our umbrella. It is raining outside and we’ll need it. And I have a sleeveless bomber jacket that I play with too, popping the buttons open and closed. But just as we get on, I realize that I have forgotten both on the theater seats, so we get off again and return to the auditorium. The umbrella and jacket are still there. I gather them up and we return to the elevator.

A man tries to squeeze in with us, but he won’t make it. He gets out and another person tries. She is more successful. And so the doors close in on us and we descend.

Outside it is pouring rain. I push up the umbrella and we huddle under it.

I am just then thinking of how we will get home when on the road, the far side of the courtyard, I see three blue and white taxis, their lights facing us, blindingly, from across the path — raindrops speckle the spotlights.

“Hurry!”

As two taxis peel off we run through the rain for the last one remaining. Behind us, the same woman from the elevator is trying to get the same taxi, but we have the run on her. We slide into the back seat, me on the driver’s passenger side, Siobhan behind the driver.

“Baltimore,” Siobhan announces, and I think that isn’t the best way to get home, but I say nothing and the fat cab driver sets off. He’s from South Asia and a little portly but he seems to know where he’s going although he’s driving through Acton, and I haven’t been through Acton before.

Siobhan turns to me. “Lizzie tells me she’s in a book.”

“How do you mean?”

“She did the illustrations.” And she pulls out a long slim paperback with a white cover and hands it to me. I flick through the pages and it has multiple drawings, multiple styles in black and white. There are bigger drawings in a realistic style and then, in a cartoon style reminiscent of Asterix, there are more detailed tightly drawn illustrations on the adjacent page.

“Those, hers,” says Siobhan.

“Wow, they’re great.”

One drawing is of Romans and Gauls sitting around a table, their familiar bulbous noses. They’re squeezed together and eating a feast.

“She could use a little more space.” And I turn to the back.

“That’s her, named,” Siobhan says, pointing top left, but it is written in Arabic, and the translation is unclear behind the partially removed price tag. I turn it over to the front and there is Lizzie’s name again, this time in English: Elisabeth Lowrents, and I laugh at the misspelling.

“Oh well!”

The road rises and the shops shine deserted, to the left of us, their neons glistening in the night rain.

”Is this the right way?”

“Oh yes, we’ll go through the Winslow,” says the driver. He’ll have to cut left at some point, but up ahead there is traffic, we can see the red tail lights reflect in the rain.

The taxi pulls up against the glistening lights.

The driver thinks he’ll turn back and go the other way. And then he begins the three-point turn. Jackknifed across the road, he comes to a stop and is not moving, and we lean forward to look at him, but he is sleeping.

Night photo by Taema on Flickr
Photo of Goscinny and Uderzo‘s characters by Michel Wal on Wikimedia Commons, B&W

February 16, 2023March 30, 2023

Stuck in the Mud

Siobhan wants to take Liam shopping for clothes and new glasses. He is excited to go, but first he suggests a bike ride with me.

So we head downtown on our bikes, just me and him, and we glide through the Rock Creek underpass, taking the first corner one way through a concrete tunnel, then double backing the other way.

I take the first bend a little too fast, but slow up just in time to avoid a concrete step on the right side of the tunnel. Liam is behind me. He too, takes the bend well, but then we come out of the tunnel onto a wide, open field and hit a muddy patch.

It’s not too bad; thick dark mud, semi dry like Van Gogh splashes of paint. We can ride our bikes over them.

But the next area is wetter.

“Oh no!” Liam cries out.

It is just swampy grass and water pools and it is harder to pull the bikes through.

I navigate a long wet grass puddle to the right side of the field, but Liam takes a different path bearing leftwards and further into the center. As I come out to the edge of the field, Liam loses his footing and his bike goes under.

At first it is ok. I watch him as he looks for a place to avoid the watery grasses.

…I am high up now, and see him trying to get out of the field, same as I did.

He starts to climb one of the slopes, a slick grey mud incline that is shiny like brown plastic garbage bags.

“Why are you doing that one? It is too steep!” I cry out to him, and he slides down back into the mud.

He comes closer to where I am, though I am really high up and away from him now. And he tries a gentler slope but again he slides down, ducks under the water. And this time he swims. I can see his tall body under the brown water, a breaststroke shape with purpose, swimming, until he arrives at the water’s edge to try again.

The new slope starts at less of an angle. It rises to my left a hundred yards away from me, and is half as high as the ledge on which I stand. And when he gets to the top of the slope, he comes to a ladder which is positioned against a house that overlooks the muddy field. The house is painted red, has large high ceiling windows, and is another two hundred feet above the top of the slope.

Liam starts to climb the ladder, on and up until he is higher than I by some distance.

I can’t see how he will get off. The ladder is too straight.

And once at the top his weight pulls the ladder away from the house. Liam and the ladder fall towards me, down to the muddy edge of the field. I hear the crash onto a white concrete ledge, hundreds of feet below.

I look down to see him face up, his body and limbs at odd broken angles, like he cannot have survived the fall, so sudden was the drop.

And I am in terror; I fear the worst. My dream cannot end like this.

Then he turns onto all fours, and gets up from the ladder beneath him.

Photo by Eirian Evans via Geograph

July 21, 2022February 1, 2023

Reunion with an Ex is High Risk

I am on a wooden boat at night. Siobhan and I have a cabin. And I am on the lower deck trying to clean up with the leaf blower. At first it will not work, but I remember that once I add the attachment it won’t overheat; only then will it start to do the job.

Once I’ve cleared the deck of pine needles, I go to the toilet. It is on the same level and the deck, an open plan space, has the toilet starboard side. At first I was going to sit down like I normally do, but Zach was there watching, so I stood and peed into the bowl instead.

He sits up high, looks down at me from his step ladder, not three yards away.

“Strange that they put all these vegetables around the toilet,” I say to him, as I survey the baskets of onions and potatoes that surround the bowl. ”It must be to hide the toilet.”

When done I go outside to look at the night sky. Karin is on the boat, I know, and I wonder how I will bump into her.

I could just knock on her door, directly. Or I could hang around until she comes out and we pass each other in the walkway. I will turn around as she passes by and will exclaim, “Karin!” Then we will look at each other, our older faces beginning to recognize each other. Despite my balding spot.

Karin is in room 23, I am sure of it and I could just knock.

I look out onto a black sea and there are fabulous waves, blue and white tipped against the moon. With strange creature patterns big enough to engulf the boat, they are meters high, with tentacles and tendrils.

“The boat sails smoothly, but how is it gliding so smooth?”

And the captain tells me, ”We’re on the canal alongside the sea so that we avoid the waves. That’s how come we are able to go so smoothly along. Otherwise the boat would get tossed around and we could drown.”

I see the brick barrier that separates us, it runs parallel to the shore but I want to be out there in the waves instead.

“Where are we?” I say. I think it is Africa, that we are coming down the south east coastline. And he tells me yes, but the country begins with an R, it’s a country I won’t recognize.

“Later, when we’re all sleeping we will join up with the sea and the waves, when they’ve died down a bit,” he says.

Ship of Fools, cropped, accredited to Hieronymus Bosch via Picryl