Morning. I wake at dawn, and my election to linger another twenty minutes in bed wins me a dream of sleeping through a client session. In the dream, shortly before the session was to begin, I inexplicably leave the room the team was preparing for the session in the glass-filled underground bunker to climb up, and wander the blasted, barren surface. Dirt wafts over steep-hilled scrubland, succulents tower like oversized mushrooms, occasional Jeeps rove nearby carrying the outcast, the out-of-favor. A pair of them pick me up and drove me out to the horizon. I re-wake annoyed that I would need to compel myself with consequences. Once, when [redacted] and I were still speaking, we would now and then dissect each other’s dreams with the offhand facility sufficient knowledge of one other’s competition and weak spots permitted. Once the exchange rate is established, the forbidden meaning is always available, like the small change latent within a dollar.
Afternoon. I am talking to [redacted]. We are talking about interview techniques. I share one that works for me (repeating the last three words that someone says to build confidence). “That’s cool! Is that just, like, your experience, or is that rooted in research and fact?” [redacted] says. Soon I will be talking to [redacted] about her extended trip to [redacted], and her personal experience will be the centerpiece of the revelations she presents, taken as indomitable fact and leveraged to skewer anyone who ventures a supposition or a rumor or a question. I consider the role of ‘personal experience.’
Afternoon. The leaders have entered. They move swiftly, smiling, waving at favorites, toward the conference room where they will meet for the next three hours. They are venturing, peering. When they must touch things there are ginger. After the meeting, they mingle, or stand to the side, hands in pockets, looking into space, dazed, waiting to be approached.
Afternoon. I am talking to [redacted]. “You look better this week. Much better. More alive. You looked like death warmed over last week,” she says.
Evening. I am leaving the subway. Pink drapes the bottom of the dark clouds in a pollen-dust warmth. Taurus season has only begun.