dreaming on the clock

an update on my 7-day work week

I am sitting straight-postured in bed, reading until I get tired enough, when I hear a voice. The voice, discrete from my own thought-voice, says, “You are now in the after-effects.” Dust has settled, and I need to sweep it. Maintenance, always required.

I put my book aside and think about the Tower card in tarot, how everything one builds comes tumbling down. I think about a video of Buddhist monks arranging intricate mandalas of colored sand, then brushing them clean away. I think about all the nights I’ve spent in the same pajamas, planning for when life distantly becomes real again. I’m in the same pajamas, and life is real.

Sunday night, I woke up every hour from midnight until 4:00 am, sweating. I dreamt about work each time I fell back asleep. Monday night, I didn’t sweat, but I dreamt about work. I mentioned to my boss that I’d been dreaming about work, and she said, “If that was a foreign language, you’d be fluent.”

Tuesday night, I dreamt someone dented my parked car again. I asked my dream-mother what I ought to do, and she said, “Now it’s time to buy your own piece of land.” We were standing in the kitchen of a house that must have been hers, and I looked through the window. White peaks of flooding waves came rushing out over the fields of wheat, heaving towards us. Within moments, there was freshwater on the floorboards. I grabbed heaps of towels from the closet and vainly sought to sop it up.

I know what this is now. The old ailments don’t afflict me any longer. I've played out my nostalgia. Past adventures, romances, and horrors are material for my stories now. I’ve crossed off the final task on my old, worn to-do list. The dogs have stopped barking. What do you hear through the silence?

I used to dream that everything would happen for me without my doing anything. I used to dream of being mute and passive with a film camera zoomed in through the window on my pout. I used to dream of being without face, without body, without meat or feeling. It wasn’t death I dreamed about, but death poisoned the dream.

To speak frankly, I am talking about money, freedom, and power. I am talking about growing up in a broken system, and deciding how to surrender to the beast. Do you challenge him, so that he bites off your head? Do you feed him, so that he nips at your hand? Do you train him, so that he learns your scent and loves you? To choose any of these options, you must first consider the animal. You must first stop running: surrender is the only non-negotiable.

My money-making is my framework, lattice leaning up the side of the house to foster climbing ivy. It is for function, but all around it is the beauty. The beauty cannot exist without the function.

In literal terms, I am employed as a customer service worker. I work adjacent to things I like to create and consume — namely, art and coffee. I always did see myself more as a maid than a princess. Cinderella, I remember. You could always be both.

People misunderstand me when they see me in the wrong time-space. They think I am a vending machine. They think I am a robot. They think I am a thread in the fabric, a chew toy, a vacuum. They think I am the nail in the wall, not the painting hanging on it.

For example: our favorite coffee shop regular came in at the wrong time on Monday and had no other regulars for company. “None of the homies are out there,” he told us, gesturing to the patio outside. On the other side of the counter, my coworker said, “The homies are inside!” She meant us, the baristas; we’re the homies. The regular misunderstood. “Oh, maybe the homies were inside me all along!” he tried to riff. It was more natural, to him, that she would be referring to the inside of his brain than the inside of the store.

This regular remains my favorite coffee shop regular. Coffee shop regulars as a population have dropped significantly in my personal estimation since this exchange.

A workplace operates in feudal regimentation. The only way to survive with an intact soul is to keep your soul exterior to the estate.

And so: my soul. I am tuned in, now, to the frequency of life. There are whispers all over. For so long, I frowned and scowled, crystalline about what I would not like to do, but oblivious to liking anything. Wrongness seemed to surround beauty, so I could only swallow it coated in decay. I could only eat the apple with the worm inside, only ride the horse with the broken hoof.

I am free now. Not in the fairytale sense. At least once a week, I feel like Andromeda: nothing but chains and waiting. But then it passes. It all does.

For additional context regarding my 7-day work week, please read: