The Fourth Factor

I’ve gone to a school building to hold a chess club meeting there. It’s dark, like an early winter morning before school hours, and it’s drizzling out. The layout of the building is reminiscent of the second high school I attended. I realize I’ve left my equipment in the car, but I still have plenty of time to get it and set up before students start arriving.

I’m still setting up when Coach A arrives. (He taught math there, as well as coaching track and cross country.) He’s apparently going to be here for the lesson today. The students start arriving as well, but I still haven’t got my board up. Looking around the room, I notice that I also seem to have brought my bouzouki along, in its hard case, as well as a Jolly Roger on a short staff (which, in retrospect, was maybe the first sign that things were about to get a little weird).

I hang my board in the front of the room, but some students say they could see it better in the back, so I move it there instead and begin the lesson. I start with ladder checkmates, asking whether anyone is already familiar with them. Some are. I continue, but Coach A comes in with an explanation of his own which seems to be a bit of a digression. I’m not really happy about his presence, but he does work here, so I just have to work with the situation.

In what follows, I give a version of the lesson which is recognizable, though a bit twisted in places, explaining how the rooks work together to trap the opponent’s king on one side of the board – I recall comparing the rooks to clumps of dough around the king when the checkmate has been accomplished. I’m aware that this seems to be taking an unusually long time, and most of the students who would really benefit from it aren’t here today, and at this rate I don’t know if I’ll have time for the rook and king checkmate, too.

I then proceed to explain the checkmate again, in a different way, by launching into a long, elaborate story about a man who is walking along the street one day, minding his own business, when he finds himself closed in by an impassable wall. He tries to escape, but he is already trapped, and the walls keep getting closer and closer without there being anything he can do about it. The visual aspect of the dream is now the story’s events rather than the classroom. I can’t remember many of the details now but you can probably get a good idea of what it was like by watching a video on ladder checkmates and then reading Kafka’s The Trial.

-24.5.22

I’m in a classroom – it’s unclear at what level – seated at a desk in a group of at least four desks pushed together, two rows facing each other. I’m writing a poem. It isn’t for the class, though: class doesn’t seem to be in session at the moment, and there isn’t a teacher around.

I’ve just finished the poem – the first draft, at least. All I can remember about its contents now is that it was entitled something like “The Return” or “The Returning,” and the first line was “Something has happened.” The guy sitting diagonal from me, who seems to be somebody I know, wants to see it. I tell him that first I have to make sure it’s legible for people other than me, and after a minute of looking it over and making some lines clearer and darker, I hand it to him. (The other people in the group of desks seem to be paying attention, but in a passive way.)

He reads it and says something to me that implies that he sees the “something” that happened as some negative event that hangs over the rest of the poem. I tell him that that reading works – but the poem is (sort of) about the Olympics. It’s not actually in the text, but it’s not too deeply buried. He’s having trouble seeing it, so I tell him to imagine that I’ve titled it something like “The Olympic Games” instead.

He reads, and then, seemingly struck by some idea, he takes out a pen (I wrote with a pencil) and writes something on the paper. He thinks I ought to call it “Das Entspannen” instead. He (correctly and unnecessarily) translates this as “The Relaxing” but then also claims (and this bit is pure dream logic) that it’s also a subtle reference to haddock, whose migration routes recall the original title’s idea of returning.

Our attention is then drawn to other events taking place in the room, and I wake up shortly afterwards.

7.28.21

It’s sometimes disappointing to wake up with only fragmented memories of dreams—but sometimes, trying to image what the context might have been is almost worth it.

In the beginning of the dream, I’m walking into a building. Many people are already there—it seems like some event is taking place, possibly multiple events. A couple men are entering at the same time as I am. One of them seems to be able to see me—although he doesn’t say anything to me—and the other doesn’t. I’m keeping track of the people who are able to see me since I’m really not supposed to be here, and I’m trying to keep a low profile.

The space I’m entering is basically a circular building with a separate central area, although the specifics kept changing throughout the dream. The first area I walk through, going clockwise, seems to be a restaurant. I pass people sitting at tables, including one that’s occupied by dreadlocked guys dressed in Jamaican colors who seem to be having a lot of fun.

[Note: today, the day after the dream, I was given a story to work on about reggae becoming a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage—so maybe that’s what they were so happy about.]

There was a lot that happened after that, most of which I can’t remember very clearly. But, towards the end, the space was like an auditorium, with a lecture area in the center and areas for students to sit all around it and higher up. I had put the table I had surreptitiously borrowed from Nancy Pelosi among the tables in the student area while I went and did some other stuff, but in the meantime, students had come in, including my friend Dirk. And somebody, noticing that the table is more wheelchair-friendly than the standard tables there, which have metal bars crisscrossed underneath them, has set him up with it.

Now, I had totally been intending to give Nancy Pelosi her table back. It’s what I came back here to do. But Dirk is clearly getting some good out of it. Also, Nancy Pelosi was more of a jerk than I had expected. I figure she can just buy a new table or something.

1.12.18

I am in a small classroom in a university, but it’s not lecture I’m attending here: it’s a theatrical performance.

There are about a dozen of us in the audience, as well as three dogs, two of them large ones, which is almost enough to make the room crowded. Both the main actors are here already too, in the front of the room. It seems they’re performing “Faust”- or something Faust-ish, at any rate. Both the main characters are being played by women, the title role by Hélène Grimaud, although it’s not clear whether it’s actually the pianist or just a well-known actress who happens to have that name.

There’s also a woman in the back who seems to be involved in some official capacity. She’s the one responsible for checking tickets—at least theoretically. I’m hoping that remains theoretical since I don’t actually have a ticket. The prevailing system here seems to work like train tickets, where the ticket is good for a certain range of dates. While I do have one on hand, it’s good for three weeks in November, and it’s still October now.

She begins by giving a short speech, which she records using a small camera. Predictably, the smaller dog, which is hers, sticks its face directly in it at one point. Things come to a halt for a bit as the audience makes a fuss over all the dogs and encourages her to get them on film. But eventually, the performance itself gets underway.

For a while, it’s just the two leads talking, but very clever dialogue. At one point, the Mephistopheles(-ish) character begins asking for members of the audience to volunteer. And, as people begin to get more comfortable, they begin to participate more. Soon—what with the intimate space and the lack of separation between us and the performers— it’s as if we’re a part of the performance rather than just observing it.

I look out the (partially frosted glass?) wall at a man walking by—he probably thinks this is a rather odd lesson, given that it’s probably not obvious at first glance that it’s a performance. But actually, he seems to be part of the performance as well. He enters the room, placing some notes and a glass with some white wine in it on a lectern, and beings to talk about philosophy.

One of the audience members comments on the wineglass. The newcomer enters into a hilarious dialogue with them, still in a philosophical vein, all in a complete deadpan. I recall him claiming that he wasn’t the same person he was a couple of drinks ago. Another half-dozen people seem to have joined the audience at some point, which is more than enough to make the room crowded. At some point, I wake up.

After writing everything down, I fall asleep again and find myself in a continuation of the dream. I seem to have watched the rest of the performance, as well as the lecture taking place in the room afterwards—apparently a Marxist interpretation of diabetes, which I’ve stayed to listen to out of a combination of morbid curiosity and a lack of anywhere better to be. But I have a class I need to get to soon, and I want to get some coffee first, so I gather my stuff together and cut out early.

Once outside, it occurs to me that I don’t actually know where this class is going to be held. I find my notebook in my messenger bag and look through it, but it only looks like I’ve got last semester’s schedule written here—not this one’s. But I do recall receiving an email from somebody mentioning the class’s location, so I can check on that—but it will have to be on my laptop, since I can’t access that particular account on my phone.

My room isn’t far from here—it’s in a large building just down the street. I enter and make my way up to my room. It’s a tiny room, and unlike anywhere I’ve actually lived, but it all seems familiar and somehow pleasant. I put what seems to be my cast-iron shrine teapot on a hotplate on the top of a small, precarious-looking shelf to one side of my desk to boil water for coffee and sit down to find the email.

According to the email, the class is taking place at St. John’s Observatory—so not on campus, then, since I would have seen it if it were. I pull up a map website to find out where it is. To my own amusement, I initially mistype "Kassel"—the place I have apparently decided I am—as "Kessel" (kettle, that is).

Based on the pictures my search has turned up, the place I’m going to is a greenhouse as well as an observatory: it’s a small building with mostly glass walls, through which greenery can be seen. I’m not sure where it is relative to me just yet, though, and it’s now 17:00, when the class was supposed to begin. Maybe that won’t matter so much on the first day? But then it occurs to me: I’m in Germany. Akademisches Viertel. That means I still have time to get there.