December 30, 2005 - Visiting Macalester

I’m back at Macalester visiting. I’m staying in one of the houses on Grand, like the Culture House but in a slightly different location. No one is around. I come out onto the porch in the morning to get some fresh air. For some reason I’m thinking about computers and how some people leave them out in the open, when I realize that the house I’m staying in has a very old, two tone computer set up outside, almost like an ATM. I decide to try to check my email, and come down off of the porch. Of course my password and ID are no longer valid, so I can’t check my email. As I finish I think, “Great. I wonder if they’ll be able to tell that I was here.” I’m kind of, not so much afraid as wary.

Someone drives up a ways down the block and parks their car. From a distance it looks like Jane Miller, and I start walking down the block in order to see if it’s her. I can’t quite tell still, and I think to myself how much better it would be if I had my glasses. Finally, I get close enough to see that it isn’t her. I say nothing and keep walking.

I end up approaching the main campus of Macalester and get really excited to see the new Union and the way everything looks now. As I’m about to come around the corner, however, I realize that this is a dream and that I won’t actually be able to see how it really looks because I’ve never been there. This acknowledgement that I’m in a dream colors things but just a little bit. It’s not like I’m suddenly in control of the dream or anything.

So, I come around the corner, kind of where Dupre would be, so that I’m looking onto Kagin and the rest of the campus. I see Sommer Browning standing on the grass, alone, but with a lot of other people scattered around. At first I’m not sure if it’s her, but I can see her sunglasses and her mouth and thin, tight-fitting clothes. There is some kind of performance going on and people are milling around, watching or not watching. There is a man speaking, maybe almost in a Shakespearean way. Some kind of rag-tag costume on. I want to talk to Sommer, but she seems to always be distant, physically.

I’m standing a ways back, but directly in front of the stage area, when a group of people dressed also in red costumes with flags comes charging toward me in two lines. They are heading for the stage, but go right by me, as though I was in their way.

The end of the performance comes when someone in the crowd steps forward and begins to lead everyone there in some kind of strangely patriotic song, kind of like a school anthem, but with sincere feeling. As this happens, I step forward toward the stage and the rest of the campus to see that we are very near the edge of a giant hill, and that below us is a whole city openning up, far far down. I am slightly overwhelmed while everyone around me is belting out this song.