Monthaversary Dream

Went to bed early last night, and woke up this morning from a dream:

Jessica had written an excited blog post about a place she’d been, posted mere moments ago.  I followed the link and found myself in standing front of an exhibit in an enormous, sun-dappled, high-ceilinged room, all exposed wooden beams and skylights and dark wood paneling.  The exhibit was on a small wooden table, about the size of a standard-issue grade-school desk, and not much taller.  There were papers on the table—printed, not hand-written.  The pages were either laminated or enclosed in protective transparent plastic pouches, like the ones they sell at the giant drugstore.  There were quite a few loose pages, but most were bound together into something like a book, open to what looked at first like prose, but read more like poetry.  The author was well-known; it might have been Imogen Heap or Tori Amos, though I don’t remember exactly.

One of the paragraphs on the right-hand page was almost entirely obscured by a printed and laminated note, from Jessica, affixed Post-It style by a big loop of Scotch tape on the back so that it popped out and quivered a bit when tapped.  It was rectangular, about the same shape as the short wide paragraph it was stuck to, printed in the same black-on-white serif typeface.  There was a little 2D barcode in the upper-left corner, which I assumed was some sort of backlink or anchor, and there were also some kanji mixed in, Firefly style: “I am so 峠榊 excited!  I came back to this page because I liked it so much and there was a new 畑辻 paragraph!”  The note went on to explain that the paragraph in question was some sort of behind-the-scenes digression on the making of, which was extra-cool.

I glanced up and saw that someone was looking at me, a young woman.  I could tell from her shy smile that she’d just arrived through Jessica’s link.  In fact, I surmised, this whole place was likely to be slashdotted by a flash mob any minute now.  I nodded and strode away so that she could have her turn before the deluge.

The place turned out to be more of a children’s library than a museum.  There were kids everywhere, a few teachers, and row upon row of low wooden bookshelves.  I hooked a right down an empty row, crouched below shelf level, closed my eyes and snapped my fingers to discreetly teleport back to where I’d come from.  I wondered if any of the kids would notice or wonder about my disappearance.  Ah well.  They’d figure it out soon enough…