Just to be sure we are on the same page. Today is a public holiday so the rules still stand; If a holiday falls on a Tuesday I will sleep in on Sunday instead of writing a blog and you will let me because that’s my luck.
However, I had a dream last night [I’m writing this on Monday morning] so I will tell you about it instead of this page running blank today.
**
I’m male in the dream. Of course I’m male in the dream, I have never dreamt as anything but male. I don’t know the time of day – or the day of the month – in the dream, all I know is that the sky is an inkish blue and the sun will not set. And the dream will not end.
I’m holding a string of balloons. These are not the type of balloons you find in a birthday party, these balloons are filled with a gas that when ignited will blow up the whole country. Like literally blow shit up and cause the end of our world. It’s evidence, these balloons. I don’t know how I got my hand on evidence but I did because this is a dream and dreams don’t have bosses.
I have tied the string holding the balloons to my wrist, like those villains who handcuff themselves to suitcases carrying the boss’ money. I’m walking down an unfamiliar street then I’m getting into my local pub. There is a tree I have never seen in my life growing outside the pub. It’s a bit deserted – the pub, not the tree. I sit at my usual spot but I don’t remember ordering a drink or anyone coming to take my order. I just sit there holding the balloons, these weapons of mass destruction. I don’t know how long I’m there for or if I talked to anybody, surely if you are in your home pub holding balloons someone is bound to come up and ask you if you are going to a kid’s party. I don’t recall anybody asking.
Then I’m out of the pub and talking to someone through a grilled counter. They are saying I have to report this to the military, because you know, national security and all that jazz. I nod and say, of course, the military, but who in the military? They suggest the name of a top brass military fellow, a Jang’o guy. I don’t recall his name but I know his face. He’s in uniform and has a moustache in a recent photo I saw and he has one of those stern, determined looks like a proper military guy should have. In the photo he’s staring straight at the camera, almost daringly. He probably didn’t blink while having that photo taken. I have a problem taking passport photos because I always have to blink and it drives the studio guys mad. If you tell me, look straight here, head slightly tilted to the left, lights everywhere, I will blink. Many times. I can’t join the military because I’m unable to accomplish a simple task like that.
This man’s office is in the Department of Defence and is literally on a hill, I’m told. In the dream it’s like Golgotha. I once read an illustrated book depicting Golgotha as a place of great degeneration and collapse. That’s where this man’s office is. Let’s call him the General, shall we? To get to this DoD I have to walk great distances. I don’t have a staff in the dream but I should, because one needs a good staff to walk great distances. It feels like I walked for days even though the sun never set, the sky retained that inkish blue hue, the clouds motionless, my footsteps the only movement in this eerily still, unfathomable landscape.
Some people asked me if I was going to a party and I said no, I’m going to see the military fellow, because in the dream he wasn’t the General, he was just a top brass military fellow. Nobody offered to take me. These are not people I knew, just random guys sitting outside vibandas or leaning against trees. There must have been a seriously high unemployment rate in my dream.
Then I was in a room and someone – dunno if it was male or female – is asking me if my hand is not tired of holding the balloons up. I tell them that my hand is just fine. They ask me if I’m going to a party and I say, no party. I’m saying little but I’m also peeing while this conversation is happening. The water in the loo is brackish and I stare at it as I pee, wondering if I can get an infection from whatever lurks in the loo from the unbroken stream of urine. That something, a bacterium with one eye can swim up my stream and gain entrance into my bladder then spawn a million nasty bacteria that will scavenge for food, roaming in my body and finally ending up in my brain and eating it while saying amongst themselves, between mouthfuls; Mm, what is this? Tastes like chicken.
I’m holding the balloons with one hand, the other hand is facilitating the urination process and I’m having a conversation with a faceless person while I’m thinking about bacteria. Suddenly I’m scared for the first time in the dream. Even the impending end of the world from a major blast from the balloon isn’t as scary as the thought of bacteria thinking my brain tastes like KFC.
Then I’m walking again, through this troubled landscape. I’m removed from it, though. It doesn’t affect me. It’s like wearing a wetsuit in the rain. Finally I get to DOD, department of defence. It looks a bit like the DoD we all know in Hurlingham but with a big high wall and a chain link running over it. It certainly is not on a hill.
A military guy with a helmet secured firmly with a strap under his chin stops me. He’s holding what looks like a machine gun. He’s very young with a baby face but probably would not know who Babyface is. He stands with his legs apart to show authority. He asks me who I’m there to see. I tell him The General.
“What business do you have with the general?”
“I have something important to tell him.”
“What something?”
“Just something.”
He looks away and spits. I don’t think that’s very military of him but then I have never been to military school.
“What’s with the balloons?” Babyface asks.
“This is why I need to see the General.”
“You are delivering balloons to the General?”
“These balloons are dangerous balloons.”
“Okay.”
“They can finish the world.”
“Sure.”
He spits again. I’m beginning to think something stinks.
“Wait here,” he instructs me, then goes to a hut at the gate. In my dream it’s a straw hut, like one of those outposts you’d see in any Vietnam War documentary. He consults with a man in another helmet, an older man with a thicker neck. They look at me as they confer. Thick Neck is smoking. I’m standing there holding the balloons, to mean I’m holding the very future of the world in my hand. The sky’s still inkish blue and the sun will never set.
Finally, Thick Neck swaggers over. He’s short and stocky and bullish, like a prized fighter. Or someone who can pull a Canter with his teeth. He has a pistol in his belt and he rests his right hand on it as he speaks to me while still smoking. I tell him the balloons have gas and this gas can end the world. I don’t know why he doesn’t ask me where I got the gas from and if he did I don’t recall. All I know is that he directs me to where I will find the General.
It’s an old building, like a residential flat. It looks disused. I step through a doorway downstairs and to my left as I head to the elevator, I see an old ex of mine washing her panties from a burst pipe. She’s standing in a puddle of water. We engage in a brief conversation even though I don’t recall the details. I ride up a creaky lift and it opens into a very scrappy and squeezed reception. There are three military men in old uniforms at a desk that looks like an old cockpit. They are laughing at something. I stand there and look around as I wait for them to stop laughing. You don’t interrupt a military joke.
Finally one of them asks me what I want. I say I want to see the General. What about? I say about these balloons right here. What about those balloons? I say these balloons contain a gas that will destroy the world. They look at each other. He presses a button, a red button, I remember, and tells me to walk through a door.
I push the door open and inside is not an office but a field of brown grass and a big tree in the middle of it. It is surrounded by a wire fence, and the brown grass runs off to my left…right. A man is pacing up and down while on his phone. I notice a desk right before me. The man puts a palm over the mouthpiece and addresses me by name. I don’t know how he knew my name. His shirt is half untucked. He doesn’t look like a General. He looks like a yahoo in uniform. I can’t believe this fellow is a general who will know what to do with these balloons that can annihilate our world.
He’s pacing up and down, talking on the phone. I stand there holding these balloons. He doesn’t get off the phone. He just paces up and about, talking and mumbling and grunting over the phone, his shirt untucked. At some point I wonder if he even remembers that he has a guest holding balloons.
He never gets off the phone. The sun never sets. The sky remains that inkish blue hue.
Then I woke up.
I had no balloons. And my brain was still intact.