Subconscious ambition

So, what does it mean if you have a vivid dream about being included in on a routine staff meeting with Bob Bernstein?

A couple of my friends are sitting there, as well as some trendy advertising types, and for some reason, everyone is barefoot, but we all slip on some random socks after Bob arrives, "to get this thing going."

I think the socks he pulls on from the pile also do not match, as do (not) mine. Socks' matching is not the point in an advertising meeting apparently. They are clean.

Bob enters a little bit late because he can be, because the rest of us are there earlier out of respect, and there he is in all his corporate, self-made, grey-haired wonder, spinning away on things that are as facscinating to me as any "routine" unknown arena in which I regularly find myself immersed and about which feigning interest. We're sitting in a circle and eventually, since there I am with my ubiqitous tool-camera, Bob, being an inclusive and go-getter kind of man, leans over and gives me a chance and says, "Well, now, Tracy, tell me about this thing."

The camera.

I point out its compactness, its convenient features and the fact that "you can get it at one of your clients', as we did" (Wal-Mart).

Yes, dear readers, my undrugged sleeping brain is promoting freaking Wal-Mart, but, you know, you have to play the game if you want to get to "Go."

So, I did, and it was fun and crisp and so different than the usual slogging about in which I find myself, the sidewalks of muck, the urban schools of ambiguous achievement, the prostitutes peppering the sidewalks, the drivers who think it's acceptable to stop in the left-lane of traffic with the turn signal on so they can hold everyone up and cut across the other same-bound lane and turn right.

Later, Bob, who perhaps was feigning interest, but who was going to take advantage of this "charming" young woman whose friends said she could come and sit in on a staff meeting for the sake of some story, asked me to improvise an oral report on something or other.

You know, because that's what I "do," I make up stories.

And I think I did all-right.

And my friends went back to their glossier desks and I must have left, because dreams never have appropriate narrative conclusions.

(You know I had a job interview there at one time.)

Surely this can not have anything to do with the fact that yesterday evening, the 50-something man with whom I kind-of work was bending my ear as he so commonly does, about "this is the kind of camera we should have here, the D50 is what I could use to shoot such-and-such event even better, and it fits my lenses," this man whom my production designer has suggested be "unencouraged" against submitting further photographs, especially since they are still in dino-film-form or coming from an ancient 2.5-megapixel Nikon, the only camera left behind before the big $200x3 Wal-Mart purchase we had to make after some kids working for us had stolen the other ones right out of our office.

Surely it can't be that he, once again, made false perception about my age, saying in jest, "wow, you've been here so long, it's like you were a teenager when you came, and you've grown up."

No, when I started my job I had just turned 26 and had worked several jobs, even overseas.

It's been six years, and yes, that freaks me out, and apparently it terrifies my subconscious, which is taking me on freaking job interviews during the night.

Because, the unsaid thing, which is hidden behind that smile, behind that "yes, I'll go do an anniversary story about your church," that "sure, I'll read through this seven pages of photocopied medical records and Housing Authority eviction notices, which are covered over in a scrawling hand of indecipherable purpose - all the white space filled - and try to give you the time of day and a sense of humanity and justice," or "why not, let's play, I would love to pretend once again I can get a straight answer out of this elected official," is the sad scary fear of "oh my God, I'm over 30 and this is where I am."

If it was for lack of ambition, well, who has been paying attention. . .

Maybe Bob?