DREAM NUMBER ONE
Last night I had a dream … and in it I saw three baby turtles, standing on their hind legs, wearing tutus and ballet slippers, and they were each juggling three bedpans made of aluminum foil inside a giant public telephone booth with no roof. One of the turtles said, “When are the people coming? When are they going to come? When are they coming to watch us?” Another turtle said, “When are we going? When are we going to go? When are we going to watch them?” And the last turtle, who wore no lipstick, said nothing. Instead he made a lot of Little clicking noises with his beak because he knew that the people might somehow find this to be … entertaining.
And so, the people came, and they watched, and then they left. And after the turtles made sure that the people had left, they took off their ballet slippers and stacked up the bedpans for the next people for the next day. And then the turtle wearing no lipstick would climb up on the backs of the other two turtles and attempt to make a collect telephone call. By this time, there was something called five-billion-way calling – known only to this phone booth. The turtle wearing no lipstick did this only once, and then he did nothing else, for there was nothing else to do, nothing else existed, because, the day after had come, one day too soon.