윤

Jin directed our attention to a number of comically small houses outside, and they were indeed scattered along the undeveloped side of the freeway, sized no larger than a single room but with a front door and windows on each painted wall under a traditional triangular roof. The further I explored the area, it grew dark and I happened upon a junkyard guarded by a green luminescent dinosaur. In a building on the premises was gathered a rag-tag group of resistance fighters or gypsy artisans who welcomed us, so I offered what help I could by finishing a project on one of their tables: a circular cut through two of its layers was meant to hold a pen with three foam bushings. When it was time to leave, I was joined by Karen King in a black overcoat.

Seems everything (in dreams) was about sex to Freud, and while I haven’t any argument against that interpretation, I’m more inclined toward the modern one about stairs representing the journey of growth or progress and the emotional challenges accompanying it. In my case those almost exclusively embody crippling fear, and you’d think that after all this time together, my subconscious could communicate directly without the need for any symbolism!

It was so typical of my former employers to find laughably cheap solutions for us. These stairs to the second floor were hardly a body wide, covered in the kind of vinyl used for gym mattresses and looked flimsy leaned against the side of the wall. I wasn’t about to walk up them, and instead leaned back on the steps and inched my way from one to the next while holding the sides. A conveyor belt-like mechanism seemed to assist me to the top, and when I reached it, by design, the lower half of the staircase lifted to keep us balanced. A metal railing lowered and would have caught my hands if I hadn’t moved them, another sign that this was a death trap. There were others at the bottom waiting their turn, but fuck them.