A squat building, five floors
tops, with a flat roof. This structure
features in recent dreams. One dream:
you live on the roof in a truck with a camper.
Another: You watch commuters
in cars compete to use an exterior
off-ramp to get off the roof.
They rage and roar as you
stand in the maelstrom. In another,
you perch alone on the roof
and stare at big leafy trees
and know you're stranded. Beyond
the trees a campus may lie--
you can't know.
The dreaming mind is mulish. It
conjures what it will and does not
serve you. You serve it. Sleeping,
you can't leave the theater
or even close your interior eyes.
Which is only fair, as your ridiculous will
pushes your mind all day and into
night, often not wisely. On that
flat roof of a nondescript, unglamorous
building, you feel a useless,
barren loneliness. Get used to it.
Says the dreaming mind.
Hans Ostrom 2024
