A dream I had a few months ago:
My pet mouse Floger was missing. I loved Floger and had to find him. I went to an office park near an industrial area to look for him. I walked on the cement path past a low ochre building with brick red trim. It had an unadorned glass door, the kind with no decoration and only a horizontal metal bar in the center to push or pull the door open. The glass was tinted so you couldn’t see inside, as if the building was wearing dark glasses. There was no sign and no other windows. I moved past the large palm trees that rose up from the lawn on either side of the walkway looking for Floger. I didn’t see him.
Next I walked around the side of the building and thought I’d check out the abandoned hospital/Parking Garage. It wasn’t a hospital, and it wasn’t a garage, but some dreamtime hybrid. The structure was unfinished in places, like all the buildings you see outside of Bangkok. Structures that someone started to build and then left abandoned when they ran out of money. Bare girders and tufts of rebar sticking out against the sky.
Inside the structure a couple of friends were with me looking for Floger. We passed a nurses station, and came to an open section of wall, near parking spaces. We heard noise below and looked over the edge to see some punks out on a roof deck. Feeling sure that they had my mouse, we ran past the elevators and into the stairwell, trying to be quiet so we could sneak up on them in case they wanted to get away. As we burst out onto the roof deck the punks were milling around with large pipes in their hands. There were a few animals here and there, large rats, possums, other rodent like creatures, but no Floger. Oddly the tuff punks looked dangerous but were largely unconcerned with us, and didn’t pay much attention when we left.
We went down to the fist floor again, toward the back of the building where the ground surface was unfinished. The surrounding area here was more industrial with body shops and machinery parked in vacant lots and empty warehouses. There were rolled up carpets, old crushed cardboard boxes, and bits of debris strewn around the parking lot. Puddles full of muddy water. I looked around for Floger but didn’t see him anywhere. I would see a tail, lift a box, and find a dead rat, went under the overhang of the building, saw a bit of fur, and found another dead rat. Floger was nowhere. I couldn’t find him, I knew I had to stop looking and go home
A year later I came back to the office park. I hadn’t given up hope and I just thought I’d walk by and see if Floger was around. I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye at the base of one of the palms. It was Floger! He was older, slower, but he still knew who I was, and still knew his tricks. I put my hand down and he wriggled up to my shoulder where I cradled him with joy.
Posted by allison at July 23, 2004 04:06 PM