One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

I live in an unfamiliar apartment building. The hallways and elevators are very complicated. It's easy to get lost and disoriented. I'm riding the elevator, which is a huge freight elevator. Everything seems to be made of industrial cast iron, painted a gaudy pale blue. On the elevator are two young women, Asian, about my age. They are chatting with each other about nothing in particular. When we reach the bottom, there's an Asian man who is delivering furniture. One of the girls asks the delivery man when her oven will arrive. She seems upset because it's late. The man says today is Monday and it won't arrive until Wednesday. The problem is that the building is complicated and it slows down deliveries. I don't interact. I'm just observing.

I leave this scene and walk to a different part of the building, getting lost. I walk up a staircase. I pass by a guy. Blond hair and athletic with a backpack. He says hello and says we should get a beer another time. Okay, nice guy. I wonder through the hallways, trying to find my apartment.

I finally find my apartment. Anne is my roommate. She is very pregnant. She is wearing a black dress. Very sharp yet still appropriate for a pregnant woman. Just outside our apartment, there is a hipster-looking guy with a beard. He gets the attention of several tenants around him. He announces that he posted a bunch of photos on facebook of our building so that people will become more familiar with it and not be confused. This seems to please the crowd, which has somehow filled the hallways to standing-room-only.

The hallway is open to the outside and we can see across the street, there is a sports field. A small one, like a high school football field with a few grandstands. The mob in the apartment hallway becomes rowdy and we start doing things people do in the stands of a stadium. We do the wave, stomp the ground, chant, sing songs, and use noisemakers. It's fun for a while but I'm tiring of it. I just want to get to my apartment and find some quiet. I'm also concerned about Anne. I hope she's okay in this mob of people.

I'm walking up the stairs of a tall building. It's a shaky metal staircase, like a fire escape. When I reach the top, the character Frank Costanza (from Seinfeld) is running around the room collecting flares. And then he's fighting with another guy. I help him. Then he and I start walking back down the stairs.

Then suddenly it's my mother instead (groan). She asks me if I am divorced. I say I was never married. She warns me not to join a gang. I say I'm too old to even consider that. I'm annoyed that she would even think to ask these things. Then she says she's pregnant. I'm initially shocked but try not to reveal it. Horrified, really. I do my best to act congratulatory without judging.

I'm in a room full of my coworkers. Everyone is in formal business dress. It seems we are on retreat. I wander in and around this building. There are tourists. This part of the dream is hazy. I think I walked back and forth through a hallways looking for a particular room.

I walk up a staircase and rejoin my coworkers. Everyone sits. The boss stands at front and begins to give us an inspirational talk. But it quickly turns to frustration and desperation. He says he's tired of hearing criticism from the board about all of us. He distributes a handout of several pages stapled. The top page is a deep red. The rest are white. The pages have emails from the board about us. The very first one is about me. It says I'm unproductive and waste time and cost too much to pay.

I am annoyed but I realize that the emails are just personal attacks and not really constructive. I think this is the point the boss was trying to make. That the board don't know what they are talking about, just trying to cover their own by attacking us personally. He says we're going to have a fresh start tomorrow. He dismisses everyone. Everyone else heads to the door, making conversation. Instead, I reach for my laptop out of my bag. I find a quiet room and plug it in. I want to start working right away.