Dream of: 14 July 1998 "Smile Of The Tibetan Monk"
I had arrived at a passport office where I was going to obtain a new passport. A woman sitting behind a desk told me I would first need to have my picture taken. She had a camera set up on her desk, and she pointed to a bench along the wall in front of the desk where I could sit and have my picture taken by her. Before I sat down, I looked in a mirror hanging on the wall. I wanted to make sure I looked all right because I knew this picture would be with me for many years. I appeared to be in my mid 20s and I had thick brown hair which was hanging over my ears and down to my eyebrows. I tired to comb out the hair with my hands so it would look better. Although my hair proved to be somewhat unruly, it didn't look bad.
The woman at the desk also told me that my picture would probably turn out better if I had a piece of white paper behind me on the wall. At first I thought she wanted me to hold a sheet of paper behind me while she took the paper, but then I saw that a sheet of paper was already hanging on the wall, and that I should sit in front of it. Finally I sat down on the bench in front of the paper and looked at the woman sitting behind her desk.
I wanted to smile in the picture. It occurred to me that I didn't smile very much, and as I tried to put a smile on my face, I realized I was rather nervous, and that every time I would try to hold a broad smile, the corners of my mouth would tremble. I recalled that I had recently met a Tibetan Buddhist monk who had one of the most wonderful smiles I had ever seen. He was in the habit of smiling a great deal, and when he did so, his whole face would seem to light up. I wished I had a smile like his, but I knew that my smile was forced, unlike his, and that my smile would probably not look good in the picture. The woman tried to help, by making funny faces at me and trying to get me to smile. Her efforts seemed to help, and I thought probably at least one of the two smiling pictures which she took of me might turn out well. She also took a third picture of my serious face. If worse came to worse, I could probably use it.
It seemed that the whole procedure was taking quite a long time. I thought about how keeping track of time had become more important to me lately since I had starting working in a law office by the hour. I didn't like keeping track of my time and charging by the hour. I would prefer to charge by the job and not have to worry about writing down how many hours I worked, but for the present, I would just have to keep working the way I was doing. Things would probably change later.
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