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epitome of incomprehensibility
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...consists mostly of strange museums.
The night before last: my brother's in Amsterdam with me and I'm worrying how he'll get along in a new city without his own phone or easy internet access. We're standing in a lobby of a large building, a curtain and light-studded ceiling ahead of us in the main room, a curved desk with an officious white-haired man barring the way.
My brother grins and unfolds a sheet of paper. It's a record of the hours he's worked here. At two different jobs. Nothing glamorous - one's a dishwasher, the other an admin assistant, but I'm astonished. My dream mind has a vague recollection of work visas, enough to know they're not instantly bestowed. "How did you get those jobs?" I ask.
He shrugs. "I walk around a lot." And he sets off again, striding quickly.
...
Now, it's not immediately obvious, but I'm in an architecture museum. The problem is, the 28 euros I paid only allows me access to the lobby. To get into the main section, I have to pay another fee, almost three times as much. I'm not doing that. (This is a transparent analogy for something that happened with a phone unlocking service that wouldn't have worked anyway.)
...
The next museum looks at first like a grocery store where all the shelves are arranged by the potential ages of eaters, starting from birth. Rows and rows of food for children of different ages. I'm getting hungry. What would happen if I ate food intended for the 8-12 age category, besides maybe getting too-small portions?
Then I come to a space between the rows and hear two girls talking about the WW2 occupation of the Netherlands. It seems they're acting, reenacting, but all of a sudden I know who will be here in real life, and there's a question I want to ask her. I hurry over to the teenage food section.
The girl with the wavy hair looks like my student Alice, but I know it's Anne_Frank. It doesn't matter that she's dead in this world, because she can come back to talk to people, as long as she appears as a fifteen-year-old. And she prefers to come to this out-of-the-way museum, instead of to the house where she lived in hiding.
So I want to ask her what I wrote about before, basically if she feels that her writing skills were overlooked because of her tragic life.
But before I can say anything, she smiles and tells me something like, "So if I were you, I wouldn't complain about your life, but..." She pauses. "You *do* have a shitty boss."
Not only do I accept that she would
a) know
and
b) care,
but I automatically assume she means B. and not N., Jacqueline, or myself.
(Well, if I really want to know how I think about people, I just have to talk to famous past writers in my dreams... To be fair, B. isn't always a shitty boss. But see bad_boss_day.)
...
Then last night - Body Worlds. Only it appears to be mainly focused on penises. They just seem to be smaller than real-life ones should be, as short as a finger, though thicker. "I should tell David," I think. "He doesn't know about most penises! I need to let him know! I don't know why having a larger-than-average one is so important, but based on this..."
Ha! I predicted the XXX keychains in Real Amsterdam before I saw them.
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