Dreamlife

  I’m waiting with several
other people to be transported to parts unknown. A van  pulls up
with only the driver inside and I wonder for a moment how he can hope
to accommodate all of us who are waiting in that modest sized 
vehicle. But then cubic units, each large enough to hold a person,
begin to fold out of the van until the whole assemblage is the size of
a large truck and we begin to pile in, each passenger encased in his
own unit and head off to parts unknown.
  Then I arrive at a small
apartment to interview a young (late teens) Oriental girl. However,
there is a constant flow of heavy traffic on the street outside and the
din makes it difficult to speak. Since I can’t converse, I look for
something to occupy my attention and notice a comic book I then pick
up. On the back cover I find an updated version of the advertisement
that used to grace the back covers in my childhood, “The insult that
made a man out of Mac.” In this version, the threat that shadows the
beach is no longer an aggressive beach bum. Rather, it shows a shark
attempting to devour the beachgoer. But the beachgoer has been using
Charles Atlas’ system, so he strains his mighty thews against the roof
of the shark’s mouth and keeps it from closing. For some reason, this
makes me laugh so hard that I wake up.