Settlement

Holiday

In the dream I am asleep. I am asleep in my bed in the kitchen of a large and airy house. The rooms are open, divided by low partitions. Bright daylight streams through the windows.

In the kitchen Galinko is making a feast. Some kind of Thanksgiving. Bird and yams. Succulents. Gravy on the stove. A roast in the oven. 

The food smells wonderful. I am so hungry. I want nothing more than to sit at the table and eat. But I know I cannot. I have somewhere to be.

I sit up in bed. The oven clock says 4 am but I feel I’ve overslept and in fact it is much later. I look at my phone, my electronic music device. Both tell me it is 4 am. By the light outside I know the clocks are wrong and it is well into morning. 

I have to go. I want nothing more than to join the feast I know it is not meant for me. I am so hungry and I want to sit at the table but I know I am already very overdue. 

I get up and gather my things. I don’t have many things but I gather them. Even though I am in the middle of the kitchen Galinko says nothing to me, does not acknowledge me. He keeps cooking. I hurry out of the house. 

Later in the day the landline rings. I stare at the phone. No one has the number but foreigners, marketers. I lay on the couch and pick up the handset. A woman with an accent reads a script, asks me if I won’t answer some questions about my media consumption habits. 

Of course, I say. Of course I will. 

She lists radio stations and newspapers particular to my part of the country, asks me which ones I listen to, which ones I read.

None of them, I say. I listen to none of them. I read none of them. 

She lists local newspapers published in electronic form on the world wide web, asks me which ones I’ve seen, which ones I’ve read, in the past week, in the past month, in the past decade.

None of them, I say. I’ve never seen any of them.

The conversation continues for another half hour. She is asking me about the news. How I get it. How I interact with it. She is asking me how I know about what is happening in the world.

I hold the phone away from my ear. Her voice is distant, small. Perhaps Puerto Rican. The script continues. The script is, of course, endless.

I put my lips to the mouthpiece. My goal in life is to become immortal, I say. And then to die. 

I wait a few moments, then I put the phone back on the cradle and go to the gym.