State of Being in Strange Streams of Consciousness

The good news: I sold the hammered dulcimer yesterday.  I got less than I paid for it in 1994, but we have more space in the house than before. I got a call yesterday morning from a woman who wanted to buy it for her husband for Christmas; I was only too happy to oblige.

And then, yesterday afternoon as we returned home from some grocery shopping: I tried to answer a call to my cell phone, but as I pulled it from its holster, it dropped to the floor. The screen shattered.  A few internet searches, two hours, and $65 dollars later, my iPhone had a new screen.  The call, incidentally, was a robo-call from a spoof number.

The guy who repaired my iPhone has far more patience than I.  As I sat in the waiting room, reading National Geographic magazine (he told me it would take 45 minutes), a young and stupid woman entered the store.  When he told her it would be an  hour, she said, “you told me on the phone the wait-time was about 30 minutes!”  He responded, “that was four hours ago; we’ve had an influx of walk-in business; the wait now is about an hour.” She turned and walked out, saying as she went, “I’ll just get somebody else to do it.”

Five minutes later, she returned, this time with two two-year-olds and a mindless buddy, saying she decided she’d wait. The next 25 minutes were horrible: screaming children, nose-pierced weirdo purple-haired mother (generally, I’m not so bigoted and nasty), unrestrained children banging against the glass door, etc.  I did my utmost to remain in “zen” state.  I failed, but I turned out to be a good faker.

And then, last night, I lit more incense and sat on the patio in an attempt to chill and accept the world in which I live.  Failure once, or twice, or three times, does not mean failure is the permanent state of being.

I had a bizarre dream in which a woman with whom I once had both a casual social and professional relationship invited me to dinner; we still stay in touch on rare occasions, but not in my dreams.  She called me on a walkie-talkie (which I do not own), and asked if I’d be available for dinner at Scrabble Service after she completed a meeting.  I accepted, without knowing what Scrabble Service was; I soon learned that it was a unique restaurant.  The dream was long and involved, but I’ll get to the meat of it.

Each table in the restaurant was a very private table-for-two, inside a fully enclosed cubicle, complete with door.  The menu consisted of entirely of 10-letter words; one simply spoke a word from the menu in response to the waiter’s query about what you would like for dinner.  Between the time the waiter took the order and the time the meal arrived, it was the diner’s task to guess what the meal would be.  Each letter of the selected word represented the first letter of an ingredient used in the main dish.  I chose “leprechaun” and my friend chose “noseguards.” There was a long list of 10-letter words, but I don’t remember any of the other words.  I was in the midst of figuring out what I would eat when the dream ended (or else I just don’t remember what came next).  When I woke up, though, I created a list: lemons, eggs, pork, rice, eggplant, cauliflower, horseradish, anchovies, udon, and nuts.  I will not be preparing a meal of “leprechaun” anytime soon.

I have to wonder about my state of being to have experienced that dream.