How long has it been, anyway?

This is a large, sprawling, maze-like house (Brain really has no interest in simple architecture) and it has been repurposed as an antique store. The displays are both commercial and artistic, with lots of places where the shopper may rearrange large quantities of things—tiles, books, etc.—in decorative ways.

I am engaged in just such rearranging, at a shelf of tiny hardcover books, when somehow—perhaps by no more elaborate means than promotion or externalization of an interior monologue—I am now being questioned in Socratic dialog. The questioner is an attractive and authoritative middle-aged male who is at least in part a Fisher-Price Little Person. He is asking my opinions about socio-ethical stuff. Just now the dialog has come to: "So why do we teach our children [to share—toys, parental affection, etc.] in this fashion?"

The questioner is sitting behind a counter and across a large room, much larger than the cited house could accommodate; this space is more like a public accommodation, a bank or retail space or library. Despite the line of questioning, and despite the several other figures surrounding the questioner who are closely attending the exchange, there is no sense that the space is a courtroom or that this is in any way a civil or official proceeding.

My response to the childhood sharing question is an explicit confirmation of what my previous dialog (now lost) had suggested: We teach children to share so they don't end up killing each other. This response causes a real or imagined stir among the questioner's group, and I wonder, in quick succession, (1) whether my answer will convince the panel I am a sociopath; and (2) whether I am a sociopath. But hereupon the session peters out and the panel behind the counter disperse chaotically (think Alice mentioning Dinah to the caucus animals). I wander thither curiously—after all, it has not been explained why I was being questioned in the first place—but only a couple people remain and no one seems to remember I was being interviewed. In fact, they appear to be staffing a desk or counter in Morris Library, on the Lower Level, approximately where Government Documents used to begin.

So I wander the Lower Level, which here is mostly an office-and-cubicle maze resembling every newsroom ever depicted in the movies. I wander back through the T stacks (or where the T stacks were in the '90s). I see, and possibly exchange small talk with, some strangers. At one point I pass through a space I had already come through in the other direction, with a doorway whose door opens only maybe a foot wide, and I wonder, "How do large people even fit through here?" It didn't seem this narrow the first time through.

A short while later I am talking with the woman who has hired me back. We try to work out when I first left UD employ. How long has it been, anyway? Unfortunately it is not clear what year it is now or what year I left. Memory is tumultuous and unreliable. I consider it might be 10 years, or 13 years, or 17 years. (Note: IRL it has been 21 years and 1 month since I left my job in Hugh M. Morris Library at University of Delaware.) She notes the library contained a lot of physical books back then—much different than today.

Wandering the "stacks" morphs into wandering through a vast department store. Here I am scheduled to meet up with an old friend, possible Nathan Seney. I haven't seen him since he moved away and I've never met his two children, whom he's bringing along. He appears on cue—but 3 seconds before he does, another old friend shows up, and I am stuck acting out another reunion—this one with J.W., or possibly his son who is magically the same person his father was at his age (way more so than Yahweh and Jesus ever were), or possible Specimen (Aaron Michael Adams)—in any case, somebody with bleach-tipped hair with whom I was infatuated circa 1988. This guy is immediately physical—reunion means a lot of kissing—and he thus usurps the reunion I had been waiting for. By the time I can pause or cut short his reunion and turn my attention to [Nathan], the latter's sons have grown completely bored with waiting and have run off to play elsewhere in the store. Ok, fine, I don't get to meet them, but I have a nice reunion with their father anyway. 

Throughout this scene the identities of the two guys I'm reuniting with are slippery. Facial recognition is tumultuous and unreliable.

Some footage has been lost, but in the next surviving scene I am hanging out with two other guys [the social vibe is vaguely Matt Esterly and Dave Onuschak, but it's not really they]. Brain is still playing out a "since I left Newark" theme. We pause at a table on the sidewalk in front of a café–cum–party house. NotMatt goes into the café and NotDave sits down with me. He is agitated or anxious for reasons unknown. I pull out my pack of cigarettes and fetch out one for each of us; in the process of which, an unfiltered stub—not an extinguished butt, just a weird 1-inch-long tobacco fatty of unknown origin—falls out and into NotDave's lap. NotDave doesn't smoke much, but this is not the first time I've lit a cigarette for him. It may not even be the first time I've lit this cigarette for him. Time is tumultuous and unreliable.

After much more socializing and camaraderie, I'm left momentarily alone on a suburban lawn at dusk. It is almost but not quite Aunt Arlene's front lawn. Over by the house, I grab a (the?) decoratively etched metal disk—like a manhole cover but wider and nowhere near as heavy; I set it down on as flat a space in the lawn as I can find, sit down on it, and spin. (It feels much like spinning the car I had to myself on my recent twirl on the "Octopus" a.k.a. "Monster" a.k.a. "Spider" ride at Cedar Point, once the ride had stopped and my car was still up in the air.)

The guy I was most recently hanging out with comes back over: this one is apparently an ex-boyfriend. Brain appears to have modeled him on Chris, the beautiful Mediterranean-looking guy I waited tables with at Peppers and who later bartended at J.R.'s. He is cheerful and sweet. He tells me: "Don't wear that thing out, I'm gonna need to be spinning on it for years." We settle in to lounging together on the metal disk, in the process of which his short leather centurion's skirt opens, affording me ample space to rim him. He tells me he really missed me when I left town—how long has it been, anyway?—and that I definitely could have come back and "done that" to him at any time after my departure occasioned our breakup.

I had not suspected as much, and now that he tells me, I truly rue the missed opportunity. I do so while flitting through some sort of hippy bazaar in Newark—lots of beads and baubles and batiked scarves, incense burning everywhere—and through the Imaginary Deer Park—the one with a mall entrance on one side and a haunted house queue on the other side where the hostess table should be (just now empty)—and all the while, Brain is improvising a mid-tempo sugar-pop song whose refrain is "If it's not too late..."

Just now... well, before the hard-boiled eggs.

I am at a beach location, clearly a busy tourist area, but it doesn't feel like Florida. I think I remember somebody saying Texas. I wouldn't know what that feels like since I've never been to a beach in Texas. But here I am; I've been here a while, combining work and leisure, because despite being here to work on a proposal, there just hasn't been much to do. Something is funky about the proposal; we all think it's moribund or unwinnable or both but until something definitive happens we are bound to work it.

Walter and Don both dropped acid some time ago. At some point I hear Walter talking to someone he's just met about having "committed suicide" last year. I consider the oddness of using that phrase to mean an unsuccessful attempt—but he certainly committed an act, whether it was completed or not, so I decide the usage is fine. Walter appears to have been saved by a natural display of beauty that convinced him to live instead of die. The display was a sort of "aurora oceanis", an orange or salmon-colored show of lights dancing above the shoreline, caused by krill (Walter doesn't use this word and I don't think of it at the time, but it's clear from the color) that are borne on a cycle of subterranean water currents (as if the ocean continues under the land) and expressed into the air through evaporation of water near the shore. This phenomenon (doo doooo de doo doo) is not happening right now, but I either remember or imagine it happening, over yonder on that beach. Right behind the mountain range.

Geology is not Brain's strong suit.

I am aware of a group of young folk nearby talking about having had to repair an old junker, er, classic car, twice—seemingly just today. I am in something like an all-purpose room—church hall?—or waiting room, just eavesdropping. I don't think it is the put-upon car owners but some other group (including Darrius from NOLA) who are talking reverently about a "The Wire"-like television show with a popular but unofficial surname after a main character, something like "The Travels of Bobby Burma Shave". It's not that, but neither is it "The Travels of Jimmy McNutty". Whatever the show is, I *love* it and, hearing others gushing, now I want to binge re-watch, availing myself of all ephemera. I tell myself I need to shop online for "definitive companion" books, compendia of trivia, criticism and analysis.

I see Don walking past, heading down a side-arcade in a retail complex, and I call his name. It is the first time I've caught up to him since he dosed early in the day. I have conflicting feelings about Don (who is not quite Don Gordon, my deeply ill-advised unrequited love from Newark in the '90s). Mostly I cannot help finding him beautiful as a complete package: pretty, hippified, WSYWIG, even-keeled, thoughtful, mindful. If there ever was an argument for the existence of the human soul, it was Don. (Spoiler: there's not.)

After checking each other's wellness, he tells me with a hint of embarrassment that he'd like to consult the local papers for places to live—it's his first visit here and he already wants to move here. He tells me he has had a really nice trip but doesn't attempt to describe it. "I'm glad you got a chance to drop today," I tell him. (I myself did not dose.) "It was a gorgeous day." Indeed, it still is, with the light just beginning to dim. I'm still thinking about those salmon-colored lights and I wonder if Don has ever seen them. It would be great to see them while peaking.

Don mentions he was with or peripheral to the folks who needed to get the car fixed (just one of the two times). Then he wonders aloud how Bill (the boss) feels about the current solicitation. Does he just want it to be canceled by the customer so everyone can stop working on a losing bid? Yeah, Bill totally does want cancellation, I tell Don as we stroll around a green beachfront dorm-style building. That's what we all want, I tell him. Cancellation.