Memories

In Dreams …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In one dream, a dream encountered once a month or so, a password to an email service or to the office desktop itself can not be remembered. Or interruptions prevent typing it in within a fifteen-second countdown. He has been away from the office for so long—a decade—and he sees the voice mail light flashing on his phone, but he can not remember the four-digit access code.

Even without the password, he caught a glimpse of the waiting emails and there are thousands and he has a deadline to meet that somehow exists simultaneously as “just missed,” “about to be missed,” and “missed a decade ago, so why are you dreaming about a job that was three or four jobs ago”? Is this even his cubicle, anyway?

No bosses are visible, but unseen bosses are the only ones required in a nightmare.
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A Death, Revisited

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

(About eleven months ago, a dear friend died and I wrote an obituary that some people liked, except for the reason behind it [you know, a sudden death]. A second look at it was requested today.)
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Queen of the Hudson

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One of the unique things that is somehow common to many people (we are all alike in our uniqueness) is a stated belief that our hometown is no place special. We are taught to be humble, so anyplace that our humble selves hail from must be thought of as not all that special, either.

This often masks a fierce inner secret belief that one’s hometown is in fact the best place to be from and (insert name of a higher power one believes in here) please help those who chose to be born somewhere else, especially those unlucky ones born in the nearest next neighboring town. Those people are the unluckiest of all, perhaps because they were born so near to our town’s greatness but were not, which renders all the more dramatic their failure at their life’s first and easiest task: pick the right place to be born.
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