On The Bus And Dreaming

Or, it would be dreaming while on the bus?

They demolished my house by exploding (or imploding?) it. As soon as my house turned into fragments of stones and concrete and dust in the air, the foreman handed me the check. It was a blank check but (already) signed by I didn’t know who. The signature was ugly but looked interesting; it reminded me of the resistances-in-series representation in an electrical circuit schematic. I would have needed the Rosetta Stone to figure out whose signature it was on the check. The foreman, in slow motion, whispered to me: Write any amount as long as it’s not more than 10 M. I turned my head toward him; our eyes locked. As if hypnotized by him, I nodded. Of course, I said. Then I climbed into the driver’s seat of the pickup truck on which back were boxes which, I supposed, contained my belongings. I turned the truck’s engine on and drove away slowly. I paid the ruins of my house one last look. After all it had provided for me shelter for a decade. On my way forward, I realized that my house was the last they demolished because on both sides of the street ahead only ruins and fragments of my neighbor’s houses remained. The people who used to live in such houses were also leaving, some dragging their baggage. It was like a scene in Holocaust movies where the Jews were being driven out their houses and sent to camps: a lonely parade to what seemed to be nowhere. Behind the wheel, I looked ahead and saw a straight road which looked narrower and narrower as it led toward infinity. That was the last scene I saw before I woke up. And when I woke up, I saw people in slow-moving queue on the aisle of the bus; they were all headed to the bus door opposite the driver’s seat. End of the line. I joined the queue. I was the last to get out of the bus.

Outside, it’s raining. It was already dark.

22 August 2010