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April 29, 2005 / Friday
The Gates Of Heaven
I must have died in my dream last night, because I found myself at the gates of heaven. As it turns out, the entrance to my agnostic dream heaven looks a lot like the generic row of tollbooths found on the approach to our beauiful(ly congested at times) Bay Area bridges.
Thank goodness it was a light traffic day. I strolled up to a car-size tollbooth, pushed past a human-sized turnstile, and walked another 10 feet to a chest-height, 3' in diameter, round table manned by ... Gloria? I think that's right. Anyway, each of the turnstiles lead to a table like this. On each table, including mine, there were some papers and a handful of US currency coins.
My handful of coins consisted of 6 dimes. "Instead of dice," Gloria explained, "we have coins." She pointed to other tables and I saw that I was supposed to "roll" the coins on the table and see how they fell. Some coins represented how I'd lived my life, and other coins represented how I'd handled final "tests" that I'd unknowingly taken in my final days on earth (e.g. pancakes for breakfast, or something else?).
I "rolled" my coins onto the table. They all came up tails. For a moment, I was petrified. All tails must be bad, I thought. "What does that mean?" I asked. "It means he gets to decide," Gloria replied as she waved over a nearby table operator.
The other table operator came over to me and said, "I decide that you get to decide." Decide what? What room I wanted, or something. I looked beyond the row of tables and saw a long adobe. I asked if I could take a tour before deciding. Sure, they said, go ahead.
I walked into the adobe. It had sections, but not rooms. The sections extended all the way forward, and were each painted a bright cheery color. They each had more than one bed ... it felt sort of like a very communal dorm. One section had hardwood floors. I kept walking, finding something wrong with each section (too dirty, beds too small, not comfy enough). As I walked through, I kept seeing friends and coworkers who had settled into their new spots earlier in the day.
Finally I reached the last section. It was airy and yellow, and was large enough to house 7 or 8 people. There were 4 of them already on one side of the room. Kat was there, smiley as usual. Next to her was Verne, not as Mini Me from Austin Powers, but as Verne Troyer from The Surreal Life. Wow, heaven is like Surreal Life.
Across the room was the only remaining full sized bed in the entire surreal life adobe dorm. The room was nice, the people were cool, and whoo, I could have a big bed. I walked back to the table up front and announced my choice. "What if a couple comes in?" I asked, "Do I have to give up the double bed?" They replied that it wasn't likely, since it was nearing the end of the day. Apparently they start a fresh surreal life adobe dorm daily.
And then it was 8 AM, and the surreal life adobe dorm was replaced by the equally quirky but far more grounded sounds of Les Claypool and The Holy Mackerel.
April 29, 2005 05:18 PM | Dreams