Dream of: 11 February 1998 "HBO"
Early Sunday morning in downtown Mexico City, Mexico – I was looking for a bus. Only when I arrived at an area where many buses normally pulled in, and saw no buses in sight, did I remember that the buses didn't run on Sundays in Mexico City. Even the window in the little building where bus tickets were sold was closed. I wondered how people managed to get around on Sundays. I thought I might have to take a cab, even though a cab could be expensive.
Meanwhile, I continued walking down the street, pushing my red lawn mower in front of me. The lawn mower was proving to be a problem, especially since I needed a permit to push it around the city like this. I had already received one ticket for not having a permit, and when I saw a policeman walking toward me, I knew I was about to get another one. When the policeman stopped me, I immediately began complaining that I had already received a ticket, and that there was nothing else I could do at the moment, until I was able to take the lawnmower off the street. I told him he could just keep giving me tickets as I kept walking down the sidewalk, but that I didn't think that would be fair. To my surprise, the policeman folded up his ticket book and walked away — apparently he had agreed with me.
***
I was lying on a bed in my hotel room in Mexico City. The room was sparsely furnished, with only a few meager pieces of furniture. Reflecting that I was only paying $30 a day for the room, I thought I could afford to live here a long time if I wanted. But I should be able to find even cheaper accommodations if I looked for them.
***
Still thinking about how much it would cost to live in Mexico, I was walking around a city park, accompanied by my pet Dalmatian Picasso and my pet Dalmatian Chaucer. If I could find a cheaper place to live, I could probably live here for five hundred dollars a month, which came to six thousand dollars a year. With the money I had saved, I could almost live here forever. I could find a place I liked and just settle in. Of course I would probably not want to stay in the same place all the time. But I didn't have many possessions. Basically the only thing I had was a blanket. If I decided to travel some, perhaps I could leave the blanket behind and ask the people where I was staying to keep it for me until I returned.
Picasso and Chaucer were off their leashes. I checked to make sure that I at least had the leashes with me — they were wrapped around my waist like a belt, the way I sometimes carried the leashes when I let the dogs run free.
Picnic tables and benches were set up among the trees all around the area where we were walking. All the picnic tables were taken by families having cookouts; most people were cooking hotdogs on grills. I found an empty bench not far from one of the grills and sat down. I didn't see anyone around the grill, but some hot dogs were cooking on top of it. I soon had to stand back up, because Chaucer had raised his front paws up to the picnic table by the grill and was sniffing around. I was afraid Chaucer might grab one of the hot dogs, and I realized it would probably be best to put the dogs on the leash.
I stood up and leashed both Picasso and Chaucer. I was glad I did, because I noticed that another dog was now standing on the other side of a black wrought iron fence which ran along the edge of the park. If my dogs weren't on the leash, they would probably be running after the other dog. When a woman walked by with a large black dog on a leash, my dogs immediately pulled me over to it, and they began smelling the other dog, which I noticed was also a male. The woman and I stood and waited for about a minute while the dogs smelled each other. When the sniffing was over, and we again began walking, I wished I had said something to the woman instead of just standing silent the entire time.
***
I was sitting in a cart or wagon, being pulled through the park. My sister (about 20 years old) was sitting next to me on my left, so close to me she almost seemed to be sitting on my lap. She had long light-brown hair. Her cheek was so close to me, I thought about kissing her. I thought we used to kiss each other, but we hadn't done so in quite a while. But since I felt she didn't want to resume kissing now, I refrained.
My sister was concerned about my living in Mexico and not working, and she had been trying to find a job for me back in Ohio, somewhere around Portsmouth. She pulled out a list which looked like a computer printout. She had found three available jobs near Portsmouth, in Scioto County. It looked to me as if all the jobs were in sales. One job involved the cable company HBO. It took me a moment to realize that the job seemed to involve going door to door and selling subscriptions for HBO. It didn't seem to me that such a job would pay much. Since HBO only cost about ten dollars a month, the commissions couldn't amount to more than a dollar a month. It didn't sound like something I would be interested in.
Copyright 2001 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
