I dreamed that I was walking along a sidewalk. The street was to my left and to my right was a park. The street was raised so that the park was below me and street level was near the tops of the park's smaller trees. There was a wrought-iron fence between the sidewalk and the park to (sensibly) prevent people from accidentally falling off the sidewalk.
I walked along the fence looking at the trees and bushes below me in the park. Suddenly my eyes caught a flash of color. I crouched down to get a better look and I could see a TV partially obscured by some tree branches. The TV was on a stand and was pointed up towards the street as if it was meant to be watched by people up on the sidewalk. But over the years the tree nearby had spread its branches and partially obscured it from view. I reached my arms between the bars of the fence and held the branches out of the way so that I could see what show was playing.
It was a documentary on the economics of Victorian England. I learned that there was a large class of poor people. If the poor people's net worth dropped below a certain threshold then those people were sent to a poor house. Every once in a while, wealthy individuals came to the poor house and selected some of the people to come work for them as a sort of indentured servant.
At the time, the big culinary delight of the rich was canned asparagus soup. It was actually made from chunks of Brussels sprouts in a pureed broccoli base, but the wealthy did not really know that or care. It was also usually served cold - straight out of the can.
The real difficulty that the rich had was that they did not know how to operate can openers. They needed to have servants because only the poor knew how to open the cans and serve the soup. The poor also instinctively knew that they needed to remove the largest bits of Brussels spouts from the soup to prevent the rich from having to awkwardly chew them at their fancy dinner parties. So the poor and rich lived together in a symbiotic relationship of sorts. The poor could open the soup cans for the rich, and the rich provided food and shelter for the poor.
It was all very fascinating. But just as I was learning about how the soup was manufactured, I suddenly realized that I was wearing no clothes. I was crouched on the side of the street completely naked and I was holding my car keys in my left hand.
My first thought was that I needed to get home so that I could put some clothes on. But then I realized that the keys in my hand would jingle while I walked. I did not want to have jingling keys attracting any extra attention to me in my current state. So before I walked home, I needed to put my keys in my pocket to prevent them from jingling. But I didn't have any pockets because I had no pants. So before I could put my keys in my pocket I needed to go home and get some clothes. But my keys would jingle while I walked home. So before I went home for clothes I needed to put my keys in my pocket...
My dream got stuck in this cycle for a few minutes before my brain realized that there was no possible solution to this infinite loop and woke me up.
Dreamed on 4/24/2020
No comments:
Post a Comment