Focus Group

We are somehow assembled in a studio. It's a TV commercial, we are to understand. None of us comprehend how those two facts came to be, or even if they are in fact facts. Still we wait here, because, TV.  

Four of us sit all in a row. We are instructed to move our arms left, forward, down, in a very definite gesture, while singing a jingle, the lyrics helpfully whispered to us. We are told it will all make sense in the final compiled product so we do as we are told. Every member of an orchestra has a small part which does not create harmony on its own, we are told.

I am instructed to toss the contents of a bowl, apparently filled with graffiti, into the face of a smiling lady down below, remembering the jingle. It's all right, I am assured, it won't reach her. So I do as I'm told. The graffiti does in fact reach her, as anybody might have foreseen. 

I could never remember the lines of the silly song so I faked it under my breath. It did not seem to matter. 

We are next ushered into an auditorium and a pleasant lady addresses us.

"You have all been the subjects of an experiment to determine just how gullible the public can be. An anonymous political entity wondered just how far the general population might be led by an electronic leash. You have all been most cooperative and extremely encouraging. Thank you very much."

And she exits smiling through a door in the wall behind her … which immediately dissolves into wall and ceases to exist.

We sit. There is now one door in our room and it's to our rear and it is glass so we see if we turn it is an exit onto the street.

"TV, huh. "

"I prefer radio myself."

 "Did that lady say she would be back?"

Chortles. Some look around. A large room with one door. An exit. Three blank walls.

"Did that lady say she would be back?"

Still we sit.

  

🔚

From the night dawning into 19-Oct-2016. 

Traveling Mien

He wasn't sad or angry, just resigned. It was late in his season and prospects were dim. He was beaten. It was a nefarious plot they had in mind. All of them were better oriented for jail than I was. I listened, though, from the next booth. His face was red but from weather not drink. He slid to lay in the booth.

 

There is a series of bays, inlets, lakes, and they all look alike. I don't know where I am in the series of bends in the road. (This sensation has occurred before, but I don't know if it was a dream or real.)

 

On foot, I am confronted with a huge mass of apartment complexes, as far as I can see in either direction. I must trespass to continue my important journey, so I begin to climb.

 

Now on a bike, a sinister character overtakes me. Perhaps it's the trespassing. I worry about him stealing my new SE (just arrived that day in waketime). I am taken to an ancient very small room with clapboard and barnwood forming nooks and corners everywhere. He has a companion and they discuss me. (Waketime reference might be the two guys showing great unhurry in admitting me to the hospital, Ft Polk, LA, February 1965; "He's 104," said one eventually.) One says to the other, "Release him," so I slither through a small fissure in the wall and ceiling juncture.

 

The mission is a b-line hike through the jungle, clearing brush and even plane trees in our path. It's grueling. Objective is a straight path from one village to another quite distant. We grind each day, and tomorrow will look just like today.

 

Son Casey will build something up on the east meadow, he tells us. He and his crew begin. We notice that as well as grading the field, they have ground up our driveway  and taken out our fence and from the gate all along the drive. Hey, what gives? We cannot even keep a dog now!

 

He says nothing.