New Moon or No Moon?

No full Moon, or maybe The Moon has left the orbit... or maybe it's that people are getting laid off left and right at my job... or maybe it's that strange tea the Thai woman gave me, at lunch, and insisted I drink... or perhaps it's that I'm reading Philip K. Dick's Ubik... or was it that I was looking at facebook right before bed, and the news about Hostess... but all night long I dreamt I was eating Shredded Wheat, all night long... when I woke up, half the mattress was gone. That's an old Danny O'Day joke that means I had sick dreams, but in this case the sick dreams took the form of not having the correct connection on a computer cable, and then not having the right program to run something, and then something else that was wrong, totally wrong but abstract, missing, wrong, over and over...

Fortunately, somewhere in there came a flood of concrete, crystal clear, straight (more or less) narrative dreams, a breath of fresh air in comparison. First there was some kind of job dream, though the job was different, my co-workers were around, and in my hand I was holding a 24 ounce cheap can of beer... I popped it open and started drinking it,  very refreshing. One of my co-workers protested that I would become sick, but I said, "No, this will help me." And I did feel better. Then I was in a huge wind-swept apartment high above the city, no one there but an anonymous group of young girls... and my boss... who was walking around totally naked. We all noticed what good shape he was in. We were worried about the terrorists, but he assured us that we shouldn't be, that we were safe, that the time wasn't right, something like that, as he went into the bathroom and closed the door, presumably to bathe.

Next, I was making my passage along busy city streets in the lowlands, trying to get by insane traffic so I could enter the Strand Bookstore. I was carrying a considerable packed lunch, and there I would be able to eat it. When I finally made my way inside the store, however, there was chaos and disarray. The store didn't seem to be open at all but merely full of employees, flitting around like busy bees, completely dismantling the place. I seemed to be invisible... or at least ignored and thought to be an employee, and it occurred to me that I might be able to eat my lunch and simultaneously apply for a job... but would the store still be open tomorrow? Not finding a calm place to sit down and eat, I kept unpacking and repacking a kitchen's worth of silverware I had brought along for some reason, until I finally ran into Elysia Borowy-Reeder who asked me if I wanted a ride up to Chicago where she was giving a talk. Then Andy Noble appeared and said he was driving her there. They were both wearing smart business suits and looked very professional. They encouraged me to go but I said that I wanted to stay there try, try to eat my lunch, and then apply for a job, plus I had a terrible headache (which immediately manifested itself once I lied about it). I thanked them, hugged Elysia, and they left.

Then I walked around the bookstore some more, seeing if maybe I could help with the packing. I came to the children's section (though it didn't look at all like the Strand Bookstore I know) and a live band was warming up, which included several drummers. They started playing, and I walked into another part of the store and actually spoke to a couple of the extremely young employees who continued to pack stuff up. It turned out they weren't going out of business after all but relocating the entire store's stock to Bryant Park for an enormous outdoor festival, celebrating post-hurricane, the apocalypse, defeat of the terrorists, and perhaps The Moon leaving the Earth's orbit. I never did get to eat my lunch.