I was trying to sleep on a couch in the living room of the House in Patriot (the home of my maternal grandparents when I was a child), but I couldn't keep my eyes closed because someone was playing loud music somewhere outside. I finally had to stand up and walk outside to see if I could discern where the music was coming from. Once I was outside, however, the music stopped and I walked back inside.

Several members of my family, including my mother, my father and my paternal great-aunt Dorothy Ressinger, were in the House. I spoke with some of them as I paced around the room. Several stacks of comic books were in the room; I thought I might browse through them later.

As I looked out a window, I didn't sense any incongruity at seeing the countryside pass by, and I didn't give the slightest thought to the fact that my family and I were now in a large bus, traveling along a road in Gallia County, headed toward Gallipolis. I soon became intrigued by a large cemetery which sprawled along the side of the road, crowded with old, white gravestones. I seemed to have heard of this cemetery before, and I tried to remember exactly where the cemetery was. I looked for a church with the cemetery, but I couldn't see it; finally I realized the church had burned or been torn down.

As the bus continued, a new house, almost a mansion, could be seen not far off the road. The house sat on a sort of high plateau with steep cliffs falling from the sides. This whole area seemed familiar to me, although I couldn't exactly place it. But when I finally saw about a dozen new houses under construction, I realized we were just on the outskirts of Gallipolis. I pointed the houses out to my mother, just before we crossed the bridge into town.

Once we were inside the city limits, the streets thronged with people. Hundreds of tourists, many carrying little guide books, were crowding into quaint, exotic shops which lined the streets. I had never realized so many tourists visited Gallipolis. I had always found the town interesting, but I was surprised to see so many other people apparently sharing my interest.

The bus slowly crept along, finally pulling right into a huge store, something like a mall, only more like a Moslem bazaar. The little shops were close to the bus and the goods being sold crowded into the way of the bus. Finally, the bus driver, in frustration, began pushing some of the merchandise with the bus. In the process, just before we reached the end of the mall/bazaar, the bus driver broke a large wooden chair, which one of the merchants had set out for sale.

The bus driver seemed only intent on passing through the bazaar, and paid no attention to the chair he had broken. When we finally reached the end of the building, we found ourselves in a dead end, in a large room with no exit, except for three huge; steel doors, one on each of the three walls of the room. The doors appeared to be elevator doors, and if opened, would be large enough for the bus to pass through. Indeed, one of the doors slid open, opening onto the outside world, and revealing a road on the other side. However, our room was at least a story above ground level, and the bus couldn't possibly go down to the road.

The bus driver, seeming more frustrated than ever, began trying to turn around. I also was frustrated, but my frustration was aimed at the bus driver. I was irked because the driver had broken the chair, and because he seemed to consider that fact of no importance. Therefore, when my father spoke up, and asked if the bus driver should pay for the chair, I heartily agreed. I stepped off the bus, and headed straight for the merchant whose chair had been broken.

The merchant was a swarthy man (probably in his late 40s) who appeared to be Muslim. When I spoke to him, he told me he had already carried the broken chair down to the basement, and that the top price for the chair would be $899. I quickly thought the chair was probably worth considerably less, but I didn't express my thoughts, because I was already thinking I might represent him in court as his lawyer, suing the bus driver. I had been considering the possibility of settling down in Gallipolis and starting a law practice there. This might be a good way to get started. I might befriend the whole Moslem community which lived in Gallipolis.

However, I immediately began to see a problem. The critical issue was whether a street actually passed through this building. If the passage through the building was actually a street, then the chair shouldn't have been sitting in the middle of the street. On the other hand, if the passageway wasn't a street, then the bus should not have been traveling through the bazaar. I asked the merchant twice, "Is this a street? Is this a street?"

29 November 2015

Unlike Christian churches and Moslem mosques, the Dream Journal is not focused on worship. Yet just as Christianity and Islam fail to explain the origin of God or Allah, so do the commentators on the Dream Journal fail to explain the origin of dreams. These quandries of origins seem similar.

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