Day 2-Early To Rise

I wake to many puzzling questions in the morning. Like for one, who was in the rabbit suit? Or how did that spider get in there? Today, the question that troubles me is why was Pierce Brosnon, dressed in a pin striped suit, chasing my child self through an abandoned warehouse with a knife in his hand? Oh, what a fun ride it was. In the dream I get the better of Mr. Brosnon.

Houses are a huge subject in my dreams. In one of them, while walking down a forest path, I came upon a construction site, where a group of gnomes were building a gigantic gingerbread house. The foreman (think of a gnome with a hard hat) spotted me watching them, and greeted me pleasantly, as all gnomes are want to do.

'What a beautiful house you are making, sir.' I say to the gnome.

He shakes his head at me and says that they are not making a house at all. 'We're making space,' he says. 'It's the space that is important; the space is what matters.'

I was confused.

'You see,' he explains, 'we have to think about the person who will live here, what space she will want to occupy. What matters is the compartmentalization of emptiness. The walls have no value because they can come down. But the space will always remain.

And just as he said those last words the gingerbread house caved in and collapsed to the ground. All the poor little gnomes fell with it.

The foreman just laughed and shrugged his shoulders. 'It happens,' he said dismissively. 'After all, it is a gingerbread house.'

I wasn't so accepting. 'But all that work you put into it...what a waste of time.'

'No, you don't understand!' Jumped the gnome. 'We don't expect to actually finish the house.'

'You don't?'

'Don't get me wrong...it would be nice to finish it, but one shouldn't have too high expectations. It has been like this for a long time, you see. We build a house, we get so far, and then something knocks it down. All there is left to do is rebuild. As long as the foundation is solid, the house will keep from falling away completely to dust.'

'So how long do you intend to rebuild the same house?'

The gnome looked annoyed, as if I had dared to ask such an impertinent question. 'It's never the same house.' He argued. 'No, never the same house. Every time we rebuild, it's a brand new house. We never do work on the same house twice.'

'Okay...so how long do you intend building and rebuilding?'

'Until we retire.'

'And when is that?'

'Who can say? Now, if you excuse me, there's much work to do. Good speaking with you.'

The gnome foreman walked away to meet with his workers. There was more I had wanted to ask him, but he seemed really busy.