A Dream I Think I Had as a Child.

I reread what I wrote about Christmas this year, after spending all morning tramping up and down the halls of Pearson with my headphones on. Don't you love the feeling of having headphones on, when there are people around?

It reminds me of this dream I had when I was a child. I was walking through school, and the halls were full of people, talking, gossiping, complaining, telling jokes, making the noise that makes human beings so wonderful and awful, and then I found my hand on a scarf, a magical blue scarf. I drew it over the top of my head, over my ears, around my neck, behind my nape, In the way that I imagined Moslem women must wrap it. The silk muffled sound, and at first I felt as if I were wearing earmuffs. Then, I realized people weren't making the same words. There faces were the same, the same joking, gossiping faces, but the words were different, the gossiper was snivelling weakly, like a beaten dog, the joker was desperately shouting in the middle of a group of people, cackling like hyenas, wild and blood edged. And it was strange, because the faces still matched, though the tone had changed, and evryone was so muffled at first, but it intensified, until it was all louder than it had been, and I felt disoriented and dizzy. Then, I saw one face, standing to the side, an unremarkable, dark face, not speaking, the only face that didn't speak, and it looked at me, and it smiled, a weird smile, sympathetic and taunting all at once, and it murmured something, something very low, but I couldn't hear it, so I took off the scarf, and the face was gone.

That's what it's like, walking the halls with your headphones. It's like, perhaps there is a narrative to everything, after all.