Fragments Gallery
A Dream
You're in a bar. You look around with interest, curiously wondering how you got there. After a moments rumination it occurs to you. Of course. This was your bar, just recently purchased. This was your opening night.
Your brow furrows. How could you possibly have forgotten where you were on your opening night? A customer, a friend, approaches you and you turn away from your thoughts as you talk with them. After a moment they smile at you and move away.
What had you been thinking of before you had been interrupted? You mull that over before shrugging. If it was important it would occur to you again. If it wasn't then it didn't matter.
You glance around the bar, smell the new furniture mixed in with the pungent scent of the beer. The music plays over the speakers, it mixes with the friendly chatter of everyone in the bar. The theme of the bar had more of an Irish feel to it. Irish mixed with a more antique theme; here and there you had put old photographs and relics from years long past. You thought it worked well. It felt nostalgic. It felt… friendly, sort of like an old community gathering hall. A meeting place for old friends and acquaintances.
As you look around something occurs to you. The bar was full of your friends, in fact there didn't seem to be a person there you didn't recognize.
Isn't that a little odd, you asked yourself, shouldn't there be at least someone here you didn't know? Another friend calls out to you and you respond with a wave and a few quick words. Once more your thoughts are driven from your head. They must not have mattered you think as you again fail to recall them.
Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves you note with pride. All around people are laughing as they mix together.
As you look around you realize that you're looking for someone. After a short search you see them in a corner table laughing with some friends. You move from your place beside the bar and make your way across the crowded floor. The friends who were in the corner seat with them see you coming, detach themselves from their conversation, stand and walk away. One of them winks at you as they go by. They know what's going on.
You join them in the corner booth and exchange a few words. After a few minutes you gesture to an empty wall by the booth. This is your wall you tell them. They can put whatever they like up on it. It might seem like such a small thing, but you know that they know that this bar, this business, has been your life for a while now. You have put much into its development. And you also knew that this kind of culture was that which they loved.
They smile at you and you find yourself embraced in their arms. You return the gesture fiercely. Neither one of you seems willing to let go but eventually you separate. You feel happy for the first time in a long while. You wished this feeling from deep inside yourself would never go away.
Music blares out as your alarm sounds and you sit upright. Already the dream begins to fade but the feeling remains. That satisfaction, that happiness remains. At least for now. But now you're also disappointed. It had felt so real. You had hoped that it was real. But like many things it seemed that it wasn't.
You find yourself thinking of a time several months ago when you had just finished a project, when at that time you had found yourself in the same situation, neither one wanting to let go…