So many whys

Last night i had dreams that imbued me with their sheer cardinality and divergent strangeness, albeit none too strange to be stripped of their dream status. Dreams intrigue me as do thoughts, perhaps more so because of their precipitous yet flighty nature, and the subliminal messages that they deliver. Often i would know exactly what it meant, other times i would rack my brain in futile. I would go as far as saying that if you can decipher your dreams, you are one step closer to knowing yourself.

Scene 1: Coming back from a trip I realize that I had forgotten all about the first day of class that was due to start in the next half hour. As I am about to freak out, i realize one good thing; it's matrix theory and i can wing it with the best of them. But i didn't have a syllabus to give out, and i can't find my laptop or printer! I frantically run around looking for them and all around me old men start to pop up with really old type-writers clunking out letters of leave of absence for men waiting in line. I look at the clock, with two minutes left until the class time, i begin to sink, despair grabs hold of me, and i think i wake up. Just that i don't.

Cut to scene 2. I am to attend the commencement, but i have arrived without my official robe. Every flight of stairs i take to go back to my office where i left the robe ends up in a barricade until they all start to look like a huge maze of stairs somewhat like The Shining maze but with varying and concrete heights.

Cut to scene 3: I enter a strangely structured house where the windows and the stairs are all too small for any adult. And there are no doors! It used to be my regular domicile when i left, but now everything has been replaced with kid-sized stuff, and kid-safe barriers. I try to enter my old room through an open window, but a hidden shutter comes down every time i try. Puzzled, i struggle down the little flights of steps to the very bottom floor in search of explanations. Oh my! Kids everywhere! A frantic and beautiful woman, who i thought could be perfect for Fitzgerald's Luella (The Adjuster) runs toward me and tells me to be very careful with my adult size limbs. By no means i were to perturb the hamper that stood beside me. Before i could tell her it looked kind of crooked, and that it might soon fall down in accord with its own unstable equilibrium, she runs away as frantically as she appeared. She has scarcely moved out of my sight when lo and behold, the hamper tumbles. Out falls a birthday cake much to my surprise, but it lands nice and horizontal. I was feeling quite complacent about this until she comes in and starts to cry. "Ah what have you done, it's all ruined now"...That was when i realized the beautiful creamy sauce to accompany the cake was now trickling down, sinking into the dirty basement carpet, drop by drop.

Parched in between these three were two more dreams, of my dad. In the first one, he was lying on bed and telling us stories. Much like the time when he told us stories only then we were little and all five of us could fit on one bed. Stories that he used to make up to appease our childish curiosities, of galaxies and rockets and excursions to unknown planets. But i knew he was gone now, as did i know that he would vanish as soon as i touch him. But i had to. I touch his feet, and he doesn't vanish, but looks up at me from his supine position and smiles. I cry out, "Come everyone, he is here! And he is here cause you can touch him"...and i can hear everyone rushing to the bedside...later i would find him in the basement where the cake spilled. So much debris! And he was sweeping away patiently...i run toward him, "Oh no, you don't! You must be tired, you rest, here, i will do it!"...i take the broom out of his hand and i wake up. For real this time.

And i cry, and tears from my dream become the tears in my thoughts, and i cry like an obstinate child, "Why did you leave me in this cruel and ignorant world, oh why did you have to leave?"

The phone rings. I pick it up and no one speaks.

I think i will leave it at that.