process – Michael Seidel, writer

I was in a dark building, but then was outside it, adjacent to it. The building was red brick but I didn’t see much of it. I don’t know what I was doing there. The whole thing seemed murky.

A woman who reminded me of one of my sisters approached and told me, “I can do this.”

I thought, do what? What is going on here?

She then proceeded to quickly build a piece of wall of horizontal wooden planks painted dark forest green.

How the hell is that going to do anything, I thought. What is she up to?

She put her dark green construction up against the red brick facade. I saw then, it was shaped exactly to fit in that space, including the angle for the roof. Further, the brick building had a slot, and she’d included a tongue which fit in there.

I was impressed but still didn’t know what was going on, or why.

Then, though, I knew whatever she was doing was working. That just floored me.

Then she complained, “Oh, no, there’s a problem. Something got away from me.”

Trying to understand that, I got up and looked over the top of her green wall. Beyond it, I saw broad, deep blue water.

I also saw a little bug flying toward me. “Is that it?” I asked. She was talking more but I couldn’t hear her. I tried talking more loudly but she kept talking.

The bug was coming on. Now I saw, mosquito. Was that the bug she meant?

Dream end.

He awoke writing in his head, picking up the story where he’d stopped the previous day. Cats were first fed because he wasn’t inexperienced. The cats would haunt home with song until they were fed, and, you know, responsibilities, right? An agreement existed which must be honored on his end.

He settled into his office chair, typing fast for fifteen minutes. Insulated in his fictional world, he heard his wife’s activities as she pursued her post-rising rituals. Mental countdown beginning, he typed faster, racing through the scene to grab it all. The cats joined him, one on the windowsill behind him, speaking to his back, the other jumping up onto his desk, heading for his right side, waiting for him to reach for the mouse, intercepting his hand with a nose mash as he tried selecting a line to copy, paste, move. Then his wife entered talking.

He didn’t know what she said. Muses still shouted words in his head, but he knew the writing moment was done, at least for the moment.

A hodgepodge of dream remnants, like leftovers pulled from the refrigerator, made up the dream sequences last night. Most vividly, I was trying to install tiles. First it was on a floor, but, oh, wait, no, they’re on the wall. Well, did I think they were on the floor? People were walking on them. Were they walking on the walls?

The rectangular tiles were about the size of a brick’s side. First, they were clear; then they were white. All seemed the same shape. You’d think fitting them together would be easy, but I ran out of the wits to do it and kept starting over to get it right. Yet, it wouldn’t come right.

Then a tall and thin white man, bald and stooping, with sunglasses (and in a suit with tie) came by to inform me that I’m following the wrong map. He walked on even as I said with heaping bewilderment, “Map? What map?” I went to resume placing tiles but the stacks of tiles were gone. I began walking around, looking for them, because I was certain that they were right beside me. I hadn’t moved, so how did they move? Where did they move to? Someone must have taken them but that would have taken effort. Wouldn’t I have noticed that?

The tall thin man returned. Annoyed, he said, “Look.” He held a map on a clipboard up. I looked. The map was white with a bold red line. “This is the path that you’re supposed to be following. Follow it and you’ll be fine. Look at it. Memorize it.” Before I could do those things, he moved on.

I then saw the stacks of tiles. They seemed to be where I thought they were supposed to be. But the tiling was all done. I was left asking, what am I doing?

That segment ended but another began.