the strange structure
I’m lying on the grass. The sun is shining, there’s a blue sky, and everything is good while I’m playing a card game with one of my best childhood friends. I’m feeling good because I know exactly what is about to happen, and I can see that I’m about to win the game.
It’s my friend’s turn to go and he gets to count the cards. He tries to fudge them so that it looks like I haven’t won, when actually I have. I said to him, "What are you doing?" He denied any wrongdoing. I gave him a chance to own up to it, and I told him that there was no need to lie about it—it didn’t matter that I had won because it was just a game. But he just kept lying.
It upset me that he was lying to me, so I took all of the cards and threw them everywhere. I looked him right in the eye and said, "Fine, but it’s only yourself that you’re cheating." In that moment right there, I decided I was done with that friend. I couldn’t be bothered with inauthenticity in my relationships anymore, so I got up and walked away.
As I got up to walk away, I was taken aback by how I had somehow not realised this huge structure towering over us both. It almost looked like some sort of telephone or electricity substation mast-type thing, but at the same time, it had spirals and curves and was beautiful in a way. It was supported by cables going down into the ground, but it looked huge and really heavy, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it.
As I traced the structure down, I realized it was being held up by two really flimsy metal poles that also had bends in them. It just didn’t look possible that such a structure, which I still hadn't worked out the purpose of, could be held up by these small metal poles. It looked to me like some kind of communication structure, or a structure for harnessing power out of the environment or the ether.
I couldn’t stay too long to look at it and think about it because I really needed the toilet, and there was a shopping centre nearby. I made my way over to the shopping centre, still feeling a little bit annoyed about what happened with my friend, but I made my way over anyway.
I needed the toilet and there was a queue, so I decided to stand in it. I was actually unsure if it was the queue for the toilet or not, so I moved to the side of it just to check where it was leading. As I moved back to stand where I was, there was a large man with a big tank top, a cap, and a large moustache. As I tried to stand back in my place in the queue, he just pushed me out of the way.
I didn’t know what to make of that at first, so I tried to stand back there, and he pushed me again. At this point, I was a little bit unsure because I really don’t like having conflict in any situation, despite what happened previously with my friend. Everyone around me was like, "No, that’s not okay," but I didn’t rise to the bait. I didn’t get involved in an altercation. Instead, I went to tell a security guard at the shopping centre what was going on, because I really needed the toilet and this guy had pushed me out of the way.
The security guard went running off to deal with it, but then I realized I hadn’t given him any details about the man. For all I knew, he wasn’t going to get the right person when he went over there.
The security guard ran off, and I tried to run after him, but my feet just kept slipping on the shopping centre floor. I was trying to run, but I just couldn’t get there. I was trying and trying and trying, and I still really needed the toilet.
Then I woke up. It was 3:30 AM, and I still really needed the toilet. So I got up and went.
There was no one in my house, so there was no queue, no waiting, and no one to push me out of the way.
It was just a dream.