Job Description                                                         Joachim Frank

(first appeared in Lost And Found Times, now defunct)

 

What do I do for a living? you are asking me. I help transatlantic tourists
understand their dreams during time adjustment. As you know, our bodies
are clocks that are not easily switched. The night is spent awake on foreign
linen, until the traveller falls into an equally exhausting sleep full of dreams.
Tourists need meaning — that is an established fact. I feel an obligation toward
these outcasts, to make them feel at home. “This, ladies and gentlemen,” I
would say, “is how we think about the Nuclear freeze (I make a pensive face).
And this is the way (I spread the fingers of my right hand) we open cans in this
Country.” Here is one of the dreams in my job: a slanted meadow, green all the
way down, my eyebrows forming a hedge in the foreground. Three animals lie
in fight and symbiosis. A king comes along with a kangaroo on a leash. He has
to hop along to keep up with his pet. His vassal picks up his crown periodically.
Here’s what the king thinks while a mirage appears on the horizon (the mirage
shows a huge box of white laundry detergent. His eyes cannot read the label
because of the large distance): “Oh my people out there in suburbia! Why don’t
you come and comfort me there’s so much to talk about. Oh my people – are you
my true people? Aren’t you deceiving me with every breath? And if I drop all
taxes, will my name even leave a wrinkle in your memory?” — “The box with
laundry detergent is you,” I explained. “Forget the rest. It has no significance.”

[LOST AND FOUND TIMES #21-22]