I was sitting on an old-fashioned, wooden, park bench under
a shady tree on a green, grassy hillock with my old, long,
black, cotton raincoat bundled up next to me on the dark,
wooden slats of the bench. I felt in a state of relaxation and
wanted to lie down on the lawn of the college underneath the
tree. And so I laid the long, black coat on the green grass to lie
upon it, the green grass and buildings of the college ahead of
me in the sunshine under the blue, afternoon skies.
As I did so a middle-aged bum, younger than myself, with
shaggy, black hair and beard and wide-open, wild-looking,
coal black eyes, dressed all in black with a long, black raincoat
who was looking into my eyes and stroking his beard came up
to me, talking to me and making no sense. I crooked myself up
on my elbows. He was barefoot. I said nothing in reply to
him. He retreated to lie down ahead of me and slightly to the
right on the grass and fell asleep.
Young adults began gathering to sit on the grass and
socialize. Young men gathered to the right of me where the
green lawn rolled down into a crease between the hillocks. It
was a drainage that in turn rolled downward behind myself and
the tree. The young people kept gathering on the lawns. At
that moment I knew there was to be a concert in front of the
buildings ahead of me which there was no sign of as of yet.
My older brother appeared, standing at my left side, as I
reclined with the upper part of my body propped up from my
elbows on the ground. We talked and then he said he was
going to watch the concert from his car in the parking lot
below. He walked down the hill behind the tree. I turned to
look over my left shoulder below to see him start his car and
move it to the closest, inner circle of the parking lot to watch
the concert from there.
Meanwhile the young men to my right, some sitting, some
standing, were beginning to have a lively conversation. Three
more young men arrived from down the hill and were standing
with their backs to me. They engaged in the conversation. The
conversation was lively and all the young men were smiling
and in a good mood. I stood up and walked to the right a few
steps, to face the young men who were several feet away.
The young men had begun to talk about having illnesses
and the drugs they were using to treat themselves. They
mentioned pharmaceutical sounding names of drugs that I had
never heard of. One young man who was standing and facing
me was wearing a tight tee shirt and straight leg, blue jeans.
He had very short, light colored hair. He said he was taking a
drug called Biopronyl. I looked at him and at his stomach in
amazement because he had mentioned that he had an
abdominal illness. He was muscular and in good shape. His
face was a little round and chubby so that his eyes were like
cheerful, little slits because of his big, closed mouth smile. He
was looking into my eyes. The young men talked with
enthusiasm like college students about technical subjects with
their pharmaceutical terms.
I walked back up the hillock to stand where I had previously
been lying down. Then two, huge vultures appeared flying low
toward us! They were straight ahead of me and a little to the
right with their black and dark grey, dirty, shaggy, huge
feathers, with their pink-red, long, curved necks and bald heads
with yellow-pale, big, hooked beaks with crooked mouths that
almost seemed to have little smiles. They had piercing but
evasive, dark eyes.
They were among us, one circling counter clockwise, the
other circling clockwise. One was flying to the right in front of
me. Another one to my right seemed to be veering straight
towards me. Then it veered away to continue its circle. Then it
came around again and was flying towards me. It veered to the
right again and was passing very close to me. I got angry. I
punched at it with my fists, the first punch being almost solid
against its sickly, dark feathers, the next two punches glancing.
It flew away, never veering from its path, and circled again.
Then I knew they weren’t interested in any of us and as it
veered directly in front of me again all I could do was watch. I
was now curious. It landed on the ground in front of me. The
other vulture was already on the ground beyond him. The huge
vultures advanced on the lawn in front of me. Then I realized
what they were interested in. “So that’s what they’re interested
in”, I thought. It was the bum lying on the ground who I
thought was asleep.
The huge vultures advanced towards the bare feet of the
bum and began quickly picking away at the grey and pink,
unhealthy looking flesh of the bum’s feet. Then the young
man in the tight tee shirt and blue jeans walked up to the left
foot of the sleeping bum on the ground displacing the vultures
that backed away. Then the young man proceeded to pull out
the toes of one of the feet. The toes came out in long, red-pink
shafts. He poked one of these back into the sickly, soft flesh of
the bum’s foot where it stuck out like a long, thin, raw, pork
rib. Then he jammed all the other shaft like toes back into the
soft, sickly flesh of the foot so they were sticking out in all
directions. He stepped away and let the vultures do their work.
The vultures went directly to the feet again and continued from
there.
I was then standing on the next, grassy hillock to the right
on higher ground. Someone , a gentleman I had been
conversing with, was standing next to me. He was about my
age. Like me he was wearing wire rim glasses. He had a
round, chubby face. He was clean shaven, with very short hair.
He was wearing a pull over sweater and he was, also, wearing
a long, black, cotton rain coat. It was a bright, sunny morning.
All of the people were gone. I looked down at the green
hillock below me where it had all happened. There were no
people. Not a sign of anything that had transpired. Only the
two, huge vultures walking about on the green, grassy mound.

This is a work of creative non-fiction. It may seem surreal and fantastic but it is exact reportage of a dream I had. What do you think this dream means?

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