disembodied humbug

In the dream, the others were berating me: I wasn't fit for the job. I didn't have the character, grit or skills for the career or the company. What would they do with me? Would they send me to the reform school for incompetents? Would they hurl me into the Losers' Landfill, where I could howl and beg and screech forever with all the ragged, stinking-of-garbage, semi-mutant humanoids? While they deliberated and glared, I disengaged from my body and floated up to the ceiling. Emotions are felt through and in the body, and expressed by the body. I knew that, if I were to keep the job, I mustn't show my true feelings; wasn't that the first rule in the Group Survival Handbook? But, with my awareness disengaged from physical self, my body could sit in place, respectably impassive; the judges might even give me a break, due to my admirable, courageous stoicism.

I had to remain in the room, had to be alert to signs that I needed to whiz back into my body to respond to them with words. So, I hovered near the popcorn ceiling tiles, each pocked and white as acne-scarred vampire skin, and listened to them jabber.

As a dream, it wasn't as good as those in which I'm totally disembodied, no longer weighed down by bones and muscles and guts to drag around. A three-star rating at best; the dream lacked the intriguing visuals of my five-star dreams-of-disembodiment, where I float up through many stories of a high-rise, seeing in cross-section all the beams and pipes laid between ceilings and floors and the steel skeletons that hold staircases in place as I float up through the walled-off "back-stage" of an escalator or indoor fire-escape.

But, the dream reminded me of how I disengage so often. Sometimes, I have to meet with other people and find myself thinking "What a time-waster! The business could have been settled a lot more efficiently by email or in a chat room, where everyone agrees to convene at the same time. No time wasted with commuting or with the usual 'Fear not, I hail from a friendly tribe' small-talk/greetings. No time wasted circling around the issues, not when people edit their words before they type and have no need for drivel to fill gaps of silence." So, I mentally float away. Unfortunately, I can't leave my body and all its gravitas, but I journey mentally. I don't have anything substantive to add to the discussion; they don't need me here, I'm just here because I'm expected to be here, a serial number in its proper place,and I'm fulfilling expectations merely for utilitarian reasons. I throw in the occasional morsel of small talk,......but, really, the whole meeting could pass without them guessing that I "wasn't all there", that I'm mute, though not invisible; I'm better off mute - nothing substantive or entertaining from this mouth.

Maybe Scrooge wasn't the last of the curmudgeons. (Probably not. He was popular because he was an archetype exaggerated into a caricature, right?)