i just had a weird dream

i woke from a weird dream and something i was typing just now that Philip Whalen wrote made me suddenly remember it.

but it's hard to seize it entirely.

i was on a job interview.

the interview as in this really ugly bauhaus building with prominent vertical surfaces inside. glass and stone walls and it had an openwork structure. probably granite. or funereal marble and clear glass.

the building looked like a large version of a new age fountain you buy at big lots for 9.99. that you plug in.

but you didn't plug the building in.

it was like a hotel in singapore that once sounded like a good idea but now looks like a giant mausoleum with green plants.

you know how these things go in architecture.

you can just take down a painting.

the interviewing process was difficult but i expected it.

the woman interviewing me (with her male peers silent) told me it would be as much.

the interview took place on the upper stories of the building in one of the offices in the many warrens.

i just realized this second this building reminds me of the building where i used to visit my therapist. it was like a mausoleum when i went for my late visits. my therapist was on the top floor and there was a fountain in the marble lobby.

i gave answers empathetic to the business's amoral concerns and was keeping afloat in the interviewing process.

i had no anxiety or desire or anything. i was just doing it.

having no desire for a job always makes for a better interview in real life.

people who interview you hate your desire.

they are trying on power and seventy percent of them will be instantly corrupted by the process.

thirty percent are just good business people and don't give a fuck about you really.

i like being interviewed by those people. who doesn't.

then came the hard part.

i had passed the verbal interview and now i had to ride on this amusement park ride that was in the empty space at the center of the building. the gray lightwell.

my dead father was with me. i can't remember if he was in the interview. i don't think he was.

the ride was composed of little cars that held two people seated side by side. the ride held these cars aloft in space and each car dangled from a long metal arm that was attached to the hub of the ride.

every amusement park has one or more variations on this ride.

they call it the octopus or something dumb like that.

my father sat next to me on the ride and we went round but not very fast.

it was more a test of patience than a test of your ability to brave heights or motion or danger or anything like that.

it was more like a kiddy ride though adult sized.

my dead father sat next to me and i appreciated his support but we didn't talk much. clipped sentences.

we were very high in the central part of the building. moving slowly in circles. you could barely sense that you were moving.

he was wearing a gray suit that was rather tweedy and so was i.

who wears something like that to an interview?

i don't remember wearing it during the interview but here we were both wearing this ugly gray suit. tweedy. probably from like sears or something.

my father wore something like that in the seventies. it was fine then.

so we went around and we faced forward not towards each other and we talked. occasionally.

we realized this was part of the interview process still although i never saw them again in the dream and have no idea if they were watching me.

i think i felt very much in empathy with him and realized this was in some way about quiet stoicism and patience.

maybe he was really conducting the interview.

the dead can be sneaky like that.

he was still trying to teach me.

even though he's been dead so long.

there wasn't so much a feeling of love as there was empathy. probably both ways.

it got us there in real life too.

you go round and round and then somebody dies.

what do you think you're going to do? fall in love with your father?

gay men are such romantics.

spare me.

my father would have done well in the roman empire.

not because he was cruel or a minion.

he just got process and his inner sense of humor was enough to get him through.

i admire people like that.

it was probably a dead person critiquing my blog.

i don't think he would be pro-blog.

but he would know a full grown man is gonna blog if he wants to or not.

sort of like fucking men.

he had the same attitude about that.

it wasn't that you were fucking a man.

the question was whether he was really a man.

not whether he swished or not.

he knew it wasn't that easy.

if he could talk to the guy.

if the guy wasn't shifty as guys can be.

he thought we were all fucked and funny in the family.

he raised all crazy sons.

well we raised ourselves.

he knew how to remove our hands from his corpse.

when he was in the coffin i mean.

if it had a steering wheel he would have driven it to the cemetery.

but no hard feelings.