Member-only story
Waking
A dream and a museum
I’m tired. My teenage brain isn’t quite in synch with the museum’s operating hours.
The trains are relatively empty at this time of day. It’s early, but just past rush hour.
We have a job program at my high school, so I spend every Thursday morning at the American Museum of Natural History. My school is in Queens, which means I usually have to wake up at 6:45 to be shlepped out there by an old school bus. But today, I get to sleep in: traveling four quick stops to 81st street is far more conducive to my serotonin-deprived nervous system. But it is still very early.
My dreams aren’t quite gone yet. It is not yet obvious that reality is completely arbitrary: everything feels planned and cryptically relevant.
What did I dream of? I wander to the food cart outside to get an iced coffee with cinnamon on top.
I’ll have to finish this iced coffee before I make it to the museum’s back office. It’ll be worth it for the smell of cinnamon mingling in the faux-rural Central Park air. I have two minutes to enter the museum. Ugh.
I slowly make my way toward my entrance and try to piece my dreams together. They were striking and dangerous, and yet I’ve nearly forgotten them.
