joeseph

I took a two hour (maybe a bit less) nap just now. Early this morning I had pretty decent dreams, but I had to go to the grocery store before work so I didn't get a chance to write them down, so I forgot them. I find that JUST upon waking up, the shock of the real world is so overwhelming that it feels like I didn't have any dreams at all, which is disappointing. Later on, maybe fifteen minutes later or so, I'll remember a little bit better. But they only start to come together as my conscious mind pieces them together in a story. My awareness WHILE dreaming isn't very good yet, and the narratives don't seem apparent while I'm dreaming. *shrug* suppose it's just a matter of consistency.

So I was at Peet's again. This one was on a hill. (It's interesting that the stores in my dream are never the store here in Alameda.) I was bar closing, making drinks, having a fun time. Chatting with customers and whatnot. One customer comes in, I make his drink, and my boss (maybe Nahal) says that I should go back with him. As I'm getting more into the job, I learn more about the customers I suppose. His shop/store/whatever he does lies down the road. We walk down there, and he says "Normally, now is when we vape." As in, smoke weed, which I don't do, so this doesn't apply to me. He goes on to talk about how nice and big the store is, with high ceilings, and how it's easy to live in the space. This place transitions into something else, a different kind of store (super vague on the purpose here), which ends up being a sort of language school. THere's a man pointing at the board and speaking in spanish, but he keeps saying "Float! Float!" as in, float on to the next letter, or float on to the next part of the word, to his student. Apparently they teach foreign languages to CIA operatives for drug stings, or something of the sort. The guy I talked to, who brought me to his "store" front, starts going crazy. Randy is there. Music is playing in the background; this is the onset of divine inspiration. He begins to sing loudly to the soundtrack of the spanish tape, very intensely, even skipping up major thirds and octaves and harmonizing with it in different ways. I wonder if this is inappropriate, but Randy (the curator of such events, I guess) simply holds out his hands. We all join hands to support him. It's a very interesting experience. After this, I leave. There's a front gate (which I see now, as it's a more top-secret kind of operation), but a car hits the button to open/close it right before I get a chance to leave again. This closes the gate for me; I decide to jump over the side, over the fence. Someone shouts something out of the car. I guess it wasn't cool, and was violating the sanctity of the place, but after all I had to get back to work.

When I return, the first thing I see is beer. Interesting! There is a peet's meeting with all the higher-up executives. They're going through a demonstration on the effects of pot on the coffee selling process. Long story short: stoned people are good for business. I make my way to the front of the entryway to get a glimpse in---there's a circle of executives---and I follow suit and grab a beer. Mine fizzes all over the place, soaking one of the higher ups I know. "Thanks, Joe!" I joke with him. But it's ok. He blows into his shirt and puffs it up, drying it from the inside. "Like the movies---all you have to do is blow!" I relax out to the side, stretching out in the space. They speak of the intricate relationship between weed and coffee. Once someone went in to go for 20 cups of coffee; apparently the experience was like reaching a "new level of sobriety." Interesting. Apparently pot and coffee and antithetical, and for that reason they complement each other super nicely. I stretch out again and begin to fall asleep. I notice that another one of the employees has snuck a bottle of cheap vodka by my side, which I have kind of adopted. This might not be chill with the higher ups, but oh well. They laugh. Everybody laughs. I can't help but feeling like i'm the butt of the joke in some ways, but it's not something I mind particularly much.

Analysis: weird commentary on my life situation. I probably drink too much coffee. I'm at a very odd place in regards to my job, I guess, although I enjoy it most of the time. It's interesting to exist in this kind of in-between space with the customers, but it's not something that I want to become integrated into part of my personality. That's why I hate the nickname "Java Joe" SOOOO much. Feelings of skepticism towards certain things, and a strange type of acceptance in the workplace, paradoxically paired with a strange tension, a belief that says this isn't the "real" me.