A NEAT JUKEBOX:

THURSDAY MORNING:

A last day of school.

I was just about to graduate. I had one day left to go. I was trying to plan it out. But as per usual my knowledge of the schedule (with its bureaucratic, Kafkaesque elaborations!) was insufficient. I had been wrong in planning; what I had taken to be the Last Class of the Day was in fact the Second-to-Last, and vice versa.

The teachers represented and invoked Mrs. Evans and Ms. McKenzie from Seventh Grade. The former had all ways been the poet with the incisive but warm, knowing glare. The latter was a notorious rebel with some fairly obvious Feminist leanings.

In the dream, Evans had been my first ever teacher in High School. I had hoped for her to be my last. Her classroom was suffused – really BATHED – in rich, warm light. It was spacious and homely, much as I’d imagined the classroom of my ACTUAL first high school English teacher to have been before I knew better.

By contrast McKenzie’s classroom was remote, tart and cubic as a custard. In the dream I had only memories of it.

The broken jukebox.

There was a jukebox in Evans’ classroom. It was an antique artifact, carved from wood, polished and smooth, and about as transportable as my Casio keyboard. It had a shuffleboard (?) interface, or so I shall call the screen behind which various discs were on display. At its base was an electronic Library with a rustic keyboard.

Gershwin.

I tried to find the work of George Gershwin, but what few songs there were were poor renditions. In fact, there might have been no songs of his, but I might have INEXPLICABLY stumbled upon French music instead. Was it La Vie en Rose? Is my most recent Romantic fixation with the French Language (and the girl who speaks it) just a repeat of this fatalistic errors of the past? Was La Vie en Rose not my song with Alexandra?

Mouse.

I tried to find Modest Mouse. It’s all ways been my go-to.

I managed to gain access to their post-indie work. It might have been a release of which I had no knowledge. I moved on from the Jukebox at this time, the lurid green hues of the album having dissuaded me.

Desk.

There was a desk without the classroom. It was daytime, not unlike the very distinctive day that I recall from the conclusion of either my first year of High School or my first semester of the second year, in Actual Life. Beside the desk, though distant enough to be uninvolved, stood a young man that might have past for a volunteer alumnus. He is most probably a representative of my self. It is as though my Dream was from the perspective of some as-of-yet un-integrated adolescent psyche that had to take advice from this rather somber older fellow. He did not tell me NOT to busy myself with cleaning up after the day’s closing events, but instead he regarded my voluntarily compulsive labours with a certain detached and candid pity. I managed to clear off the entirety of the contents of the desktop, which looked as though they had been the setting for an elementary Arts and Crafts project. Upon this desk I set the Jukebox and abandoned it; upon this rock I built my proverbial Church.

All fits.

It fit neatly atop the desk.

Ten minutes late.

When finally I made my way to my last lesson of the day I was all ready ten minutes late. I did not fret over this; I preferred it this way. The less I saw of that custard classroom the better my situation, to my mind. Rather than traveling directly to the class, which was situated towards the South End of the campus, I traveled directly East, up a hallway that would lead me by one left turn and a quick right to the men’s restroom. If I recall correctly, this one was the Men’s Faculty Restroom that I had used in my freshman year before discovering that it was not for students. In the dream it was situated further up the hallway than it was in Actuality, across from where the student’s restroom in Actuality would be.

Bathroom.

I awoke nearly seamlessly. I needed desperately to use the bathroom. The realism of this parallel suggests likewise that today would be the living out of whatever the Sixth Class represented. Knowing Ms. McKenzie, it would probably be a very practical and Capricorn Day. And so it turned out to be, whether by Fate or Choice, and probably both.

Dm.A.A.