A cafeteria, a window, coleslaw

Elaine and I were sitting in a school cafeteria. It was packed with students. In one corner, a student, white, male, was playing the alto sax. At the table next to us, a student, Black, male, was singing. And in the distance, next to a wall, a third student, white, male, was playing the drums. They made a mighty sound together.

And then I was in my paternal grandparents’ fifth-floor apartment. I was helping a little blond boy climb out the window and down the side of the building. When he disappeared, I went downstairs to look for him but couldn’t find him. His mother appeared. “Oh, he does that all the time,” she said. And then the boy was standing before us.

Back in the building I saw that there were many dishes not washed from the day before, and a large bowl of coleslaw that needed to be refrigerated.

A possible source, at least for the cafeteria scene and the window: the film adaptation of Nella Larsen’s novel Passing (dir. Rebecca Hall, 2021). I don’t know where the coleslaw came from.

I dreamed this dream Sunday night after watching Passing. For anyone who believes, as Vladimir Nabokov did, in precognitive dreaming, I watched Questlove’s 2025 documentary Sly Lives! last night. An impulse purchase, so to speak. The Family Stone’s two white members: saxophonist Jerry Martini and drummer Greg Errico. And this morning, I read this passage, from Digital Ink’d’s exploration of the ruins of the InterRoyal Corporation, once a manufacturer of office furniture:

Even in its decay, InterRoyal draws people in. And on that summer day, it wasn’t just us. As we circled the remnants, searching for a safe descent into a shallow basement area, we heard voices rolling up behind us. Two kids, barely middle schoolers, emerged from the side rail over a dirt mound like they owned the place.

One of them, a boy no older than 11, offered casual advice on how to climb down. He’d been here before. Knew every foothold and hidden drop like the back of his hand. His nonchalance was jarring. This was no playground; this was a derelict structure riddled with chemicals, rusted beams, and collapse-ready floors. And yet, these local kids treated it like a secret clubhouse, indifferent to the very real dangers it posed.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951). I believe in coincidence, not precognition.]