[Dream] - Office Politics, Farm Animals, Office Romance, and Classical Music

"LEAVING"

There's a beautiful woman at work. She might be Iranian. She's tall and sullen. We've never seen eye to eye, I don't know why, but when I see a crowd around her and I hear her saying googbye to people, I go over.

She's wearing a denim dress with a short jacket. Her hair is naturally brown and blonde, very short and curly.

When I'm near enough for us to hear each other and we make eye contact, I say:

"It sounds like you're leaving for a long time."

"I'm fired," she says with no hint of emotion.

"Oh," I say. "Look, I'm sorry we didn't talk more, but ..."

She raises one hand, like a police officer stopping traffic.

She moves on to the next conversation with the next person.

Delighted by my humiliation, my boss smiles at me from her podium.

"​ANIMALS"

I check on the animals. They are in a field, penned into a small area by electric fence wire. 

The goat has a great capacity for kicking things and is currently kicking a bail of hay over the fence line so that the animals can't eat. 

"Why are animals such assholes?" I ask myself.

Later, the goat challenges the bull to a fight. The goat soon charges, but instead of butting heads, it jumps, runs over the bull's back and jumps off the other side.

"BACK IN THE OFFICE"
​
I try to get on with my work. I fix a computer screen. I chat to an old friend I used to work with IRL; she too is spiky and uncommunicative, as if she is upset with me. 

Later, a female colleague I don't know sidles closer and closer until she is clinging to my arm. A man is staring at us, distressed. 

"If you want to break up with him," I suggest to the woman, "you should probably be more direct."

After thinking it over, she relinquishes my arm and breaks into song. She sings to her partner about how she feels. Trapped. Like he doesn't appreciate her. 

He sings back, operatically. He loves her really. He just doesn't know how to show it.

"That was great," I say.

They look at me blankly, until I sing something like:

"That was great
what you said;
put the past
in its bed."

The happy couple beam at me.

"BREAK"

In the toilets, a white, enamel sink that stretches the length of the room. By the chrome-plated taps, there is a 6-octave piano. 

I don't even pee. I just wash my hands and play the piano. Everything I play on this piano sounds beautiful. The sound reverberates and swells, pushed around by the dank, grey-brown walls.

I play a sad song with deep, sorrowful chords and a wistful, heart-rending melody.

​I worry that anyone hearing this outside the toilet will worry about my mental state, but I'm ok. I just need some time.