Sunseeds

I'm at a hospital or rehab center, visiting family. Simultaneously, I'm in Greece or Isreal with O & N, my niece and nephew. One wing of the building is noticeably run down; it's where the welfare patients live. I want to fix this, eying the foyer to the wards, wallpaper stained and peeling. I could pull down that paper, fix and paint the walls. I have skills in this work. Surly the authorities would approve. I consider getting permissions as I shrug off the fact that tackling this job will keep me inside for days.

O & N clamor for the great outdoors. I feel them pull my hands and laugh and clown around me. I reach like a woman obsessed for a peeling corner of pink flowered paper and rip away a good sized chunk, blinking with equal satisfaction and dread. As I wonder if the institution might finish the job, a couple of nun type characters show up, nod their approval, leave the completion to me.

The foyer has modest walls and painted ceiling. It opens into a giant hall with infinite ceilings that, lo and behold, are plastered with more flowered paper. Walls and ceiling have cracks and grooves begging a professional's hand. Away I peel into the vast hall, vaguely cognisant that papered walls need endless scrubbing before the paint goes on.

The place takes on a dingy feel, a musty smell, a hopeless sound of muffled laughter as two Israeli bikers rev up along the sparkly sea with its blinding sand reflections. I hope and hope, against all evidence, for rescue, working wildly, perplexed by my choices.

In the end, I wake up, panting, aware. My bondage to pink fading flowers never was nor evermore shall be.