Tag: decisions

A Dream of Cans and Cars

It began with an urge to go check on my car. It was my old Mazda RX7. A cover protected it. I decided to lift the cover up some and start the car.

RX7

My old car

Sitting inside, listening to it idle, I decided to take it around the block. I didn’t take the cover off, though. I figured I could peek around it to see. It was almost twilight, and I didn’t think anyone would be out, and I wasn’t going far. All of it was a ludicrous idea; in the dream, the neighborhood was full of narrow alleys. They were barely wide enough for the car if you could see, but I was certain that I couldn’t do it.

Gosh, things didn’t work out. I couldn’t turn the car as expected. Exiting the car, I discovered that I wasn’t even on the road.

I blamed the car, of course. I pulled the cover off, balled it up, and set it aside. Then I decided to change the car. Laying my hands on its fenders, hood, trunk, bumpers, etc., I changed it into a new vehicle.

This was much better. Driving off, I arrived at my destination and sought parking. I had a usual space. It was available, so I parked there. But then I heard a small noise and felt a bump. Getting out of my car, I discovered that a woman in a blue Volvo was trying to squeeze by. She didn’t look at me or my car at all. Her hands had tight grip on the stirring wheel, and she was staring straight ahead.

Well, be a nice guy, I though, move your car so she could get by (even though she was in the wrong). It’s the proper thing to do. I jumped into the car and backed it out of her way. She passed on without a look. “Not even a thanks,” I exclaimed to myself.

My parking spot was now gone. Exasperated, I drove further in. I discovered that I was driving through an upscale clothing boutique. I found a parking space between a rack of clothes. Then I decided, well, I shouldn’t park in the store. Backing out, I drove into the streets, circling until I found new parking.

I was at a cafe. It was dark. Going in, I stepped through from one dimension, where this cafe was dark and quiet, to another, where it was light and bustling. Lousy with customers, my table was free for me. The cafe folk knew me and had my coffee drink and a croissant waiting for me at the table. Happy greetings were exchanged.

A short, dark-haired, white woman at another table had a bag full of canned cat food. Talking to me, she spilled the bag onto the ground. She and I laughed about that, and regaled one another with tales of feeding cats.

She announced, “I have to go.” She left, leaving her cans on the ground. I couldn’t believe that. The cans were “Fancy Feast” and “Friskies”. I decided to collect them for her and give them to her later.

People kicked the cans around, though. Cars drove over a few. I thought, this isn’t right. Collecting the cans in a bag, I went through the cafe. I wanted to return to my dimension but I didn’t want others to see me do it.

I slipped around the corner into a private space. Part of the cafe, it was a windowed hallway. Curtains, floors, and walls were all white. The windows were open, and the curtains were fluttering with a breeze.

I had expected to go through to the other dimension. When that didn’t happen, I blamed the bag of cans. I had to get rid of them to go back, I thought, because they don’t belong to the other dimension, but also thinking, going back means going forward, but I didn’t want to leave the cans behind.

I’d need to find another way.

The dream ended.

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Peas

He doesn’t like peas, and turns them down — of course. Who eats food that they don’t like, except children being forced to do so by parents, guardians, and caretakers? Or sick people being forced to eat something cuz it’s good for them? Or starving people who can’t be choosers? Okay, we’ll stipulate that exemptions exist. 

People often try to force them on them, as if some loop will suddenly change. He admits, only to himself, that, yes, it’s possible some loop will suddenly change, but to get to that point, he must eat peas, and he doesn’t wanna.

Others ask, why don’t you like peas? As if every decision stand on foundations of logic. As if he has a choice about everything. As if he fully understands the logic of why he doesn’t like peas, or he knows the fulcrum of the moment when he and peas parted ways — if they’d ever been together in the first place.

When asked about his refusal to eat peas, peas said, “Who?” And laughed.

10

The Management Dream

I dreamed I was in upper middle management with a large, international corporation. I was part of a team, and we’d just realized that we’d made a huge mistake. I don’t know what the mistake was, but major negative career, environmental, and economic ramifications were expected as a result of our decision and the corporation’s subsequent actions. It was going to affect the company’s stock price, bottom line, and people’s employment.

Worried, we were having meetings to work out what we could to do save ourselves and mitigate the impacts that we were projecting. I began developing an idea. As I explored it, I was uncomfortable with the moral and ethical side of it, because it meant sacrificing someone by using them as the fall guy. It would save my career, along with many others, and reduce the economic impact, but at a cost to my principles. I didn’t like that.

While exploring that option, I called and visited others, searching for another way. As that happened, I ran into the person who would be the fall guy. They were a young, positive, and optimistic person. They’d realized that blaming them would go a long way to helping many others, and was essentially volunteering to do that. “I’m young,” he said. “I’ll rebound.”

I was dubious. I didn’t want to be convinced. I felt his youth and inexperience was making him over-optimistic. Basically, as the dream progressed, the rest of the management team and this individual put the burden of decision on me.

Back in the building where I worked, I sat in a meeting with the rest of the management team. The agenda was about other things, and not this crises. They were speaking in low voices. I was by myself at the end of a long conference table. I was aware that they sometimes glanced my way. I was aware that they awaited my decision.

I decided. Placing a call on a cell phone, I told the person on the other end, “I have a way out.” I knew I was sacrificing the volunteer. I knew it would work. I didn’t like it.

Hearing me on the phone, other team members began passing on the word that I’d decided. Relief flowed through the room like water.

Turning away, I spoke on the phone and put the plan in action.

The end.

3

Sock

You ever start to put your socks on, and notice a hole just starting in the toe of one? But you decide to put it on anyway, because it’s just a little hole. And then, you feel the hole enlarging as you go through the day, until you feel your toe pop through it, so now the sock hole is strangling your toe, and you rue your decision?

Really?

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Prove It

The first thing he thought of, after recognizing where he was, and what he was doing, was the Rolling Stones song, “Get Off of My Cloud.” Not really correct. Does correctness have degrees? Sure, they give partial credit to partially correct answers. Yes, but not in this situation. So, he corrected, not correct. He wasn’t on a cloud. He was on a contrail, as he’d learned they were called, a chemtrail, as others called them in the second half of his life.

Poisonous air vapors, they were. Surrounded by blue sky, he was walking on them. As he didn’t know how he’d reached them (nor how he could be walking on them), he believed he was dreaming. How high was he? Well, very high. He’d read that commercial aircraft generally fly over thirty thousand feet in the U.S. He assumed he was in U.S. air space, although nothing supported that assumption.

Physically, then, he wasn’t doing this, couldn’t be doing this, unless it was a dream or virtual reality. There was no way he could otherwise be surviving so comfortably at such an altitude. At this altitude, if it’s over thirty thousand feet, he was higher than Mount Everest. The air would be too thin for normal breathing, he was breathing normally, he ascertained with tests. At that altitude, the temperature would be forty-nine degrees below zero, or worse. He wasn’t dressed for that kind of cold.

But here he was, in his Lee jeans, knit shirt, Nikes, and Columbia Wear fleece, striding along without issue. Which presented the idea that maybe these contrails were far lower than they should be. That was absurd, of course; that’s not how they worked. Nevertheless, he stopped walking, turned, and looked over the side.

Big, big mistake.

He’d been able to see mountain tops and distant horizons of clustered buildings and farmland when walking along. But now, looking down, he found a true sense of his altitude, and it freaked him out. He was so freaked out, he should awaken at any moment now.

He waited.

Nothing changed. He looked back and forth along his contrail. It stretched on for a long distance. He could do three things now. One, step off the contrail and see what happens. Two, follow the contrail and see if it led anywhere. Three, he could stand there and do nothing until the contrail faded away.

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Hole

You ever put a sock on that’s almost new, like, bought a month ago, and you find a hole in the toe, so you think about that sock and what you paid, and the hole in the toe, and how cheap some things are made, and how you should take it back to get a refund, but you probably don’t have the receipt, so you decide you should throw it away instead, because it has a hole, but then decide, screw it, nobody will see it, it’s just a sock, and I paid good money for that, so you put it on anyway, and then you can feel your toe sticking through the hole as you’re walking around, reminding you about how cheap it is, and by extension, how cheap you are?

Yeah, me neither.

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Could of Been

Have you ever turned down a position, and then seen how successful the person who took it becomes, and think, that could have been me?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

1

Driving in my Car

I was alone. Driving in my car, a dark SUV, which is not my car, but I had procured it for a dream.

Attempting to park, I broke the driver’s mirror and scratched the passenger side. I tried leaving the car but couldn’t open the door sufficiently to get out. I was too close to the rest.

I backed up, trying to create another plan. A black child was in the back seat. I didn’t know them. Apologizing, I told them to get out but took them for a ride to help them reach their destination.

Parking elsewhere, I learned I had a temporary room at a temporary location. I was in the Philippines. I was supposed to be leaving. I entered the building, cement with several floors. Going to my room, a military style modern barracks room, I discovered a mess. I wasn’t ready to leave at all. Opened and unopened cans of Fancy Feast cat food was everywhere. Most were chicken flavor. I attempted to collect and sort them into bags, to dispose of them, while also attempting to pack my clothes. I also found half-pints of unopened milk containers around the room. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. I had no refrigerator, didn’t have any need for them, and didn’t understand why I had them. I couldn’t remember buying milk or cat food.

I was running out of time but strangers kept interrupting, and distant relatives dropped in to visit. I was trying to understand, did I bring my car here? If so, how did I bring it? If it was my car, how was I going to get it back to where I came from? I had airline tickets. The car couldn’t fly with me, could it? I found a picture of myself from the previous year a relative had taken and left for me to see. My photo disgusted me.

Pro football players entered. One was Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback. The others were famous players. They nodded greetings toward me but were talking among themselves. I don’t think they knew me.

I needed more information to help me decide what to do but there wasn’t anyone to give any. I raced around, in and out of my room and up and down flights of stairs through the cement complex with the cans, the milk, my clothing, dodging people, trying to comprehend what was happening with my car, trying to decide what to do with it, wondering if I could get more time to deal with it.

I awoke with nothing resolved, with the dream streaming through my mind, filling me with thoughts about potential meanings.

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