Fire Etched on Ice

In my traditional setting for dreams, a dim room so I don't have to tax my visual imagination too much, I'm sitting over a printed circuit board. Miz Ethleen, my high school Spanish teacher, is watching me suspiciously, like she did the time Claudia in the seat ahead of me exposed lots of her middle to reach over for something dropped.

You can tell what folks look like by studying the chips on the PCB which represents them. You want to see conformity, nice simple sound lacing in the welds and pouty lips.

I am coloring a chip on the board we're studying. I am aware my betawife is complaining at one side. I'm waiting for her to desist. She says I shouldn't be coloring the chips on the board. Always she represents the public against me, thinking that will stand her in good stead. Very threatened.

It doesn't stop, so I stand up and walk away.

Onto a lift, which is nothing but the ordinary run into a henhouse. That's right, it's a riser about one inch by two feet with a crosstitch of a flat stick for traction paralleling all along the way. We shuffle up the run like chickens.

Up there are rooms where some fabulous displays are available. The art showings are in rooms decorated to look like where you go to find fresh eggs. One exhibit is fire etched on ice. Another is hope in formaldehyde. Still more is a still wind.

You cannot remove anything from these premises, not even theories. You will not even be able to remember the works long enough to describe them. Still we head on up.

Someone is shuffling extremely slowly just ahead. There is a gap in front of him, but I cannot pass. Maybe he's working as hard as he can to move up. But he isn't moving very fast.