It's been several days since I had this dream -- but just didn't find the time to write it up. "Travis" is a member of the Turks Head Jugglers group and, I think, has aspirations of leading the group if and when I relinquish that role.
In my dream, we (not sure who "we" are...) are just finishing up a presentation on science. (I think we were just audience members, but my notes aren't clear on that subject.)
We have to "check out" from this presentation -- much like one has to do at a hotel. The area we're in is remindful of the ground floor of a large department store, and there are displays of items (for sale?) around us. But they're spaced pretty far apart; so that the atmosphere doesn't resonate well with the idea of it actually being a department store. And it has the feeling of being used only occasionally. There are very few other people in the area, and we're unlikely to interact with any of them.
Travis feels that we need to "clean up" the area before we leave. I'm puzzled by this. I mean, we just came for this presentation and now it's time to leave. You don't clean up a movie theater after the show or the lobby of a hotel, so why should we bother cleaning up here? No answer. But Travis is insistent, and the rest of us know that life will be easier if we just went along with his request/demand.
My part of the clean-up effort is to vacuum the carpet. The vacuum cleaner is rather light and not very efficient. When I started working, it looked to me as if the carpet were a mid-tone gray. But as I go over an area (which takes a number of passes because the vacuum is so ineffective), I see that the color actually comes from a very heavy coating of dust. The actual carpet is a different color, but my notes don't mention what that other color is.
So it takes me considerable effort to clean up a very small area of carpet. And now you have that situation like cleaning a spot off a painted wall and the clean surface makes the rest of the wall look bad. So you may wind up just repainting the entire wall. And I look up from my task and realize that the gray surface extends in all directions as a nice easy coat -- with the exception of the spot that I've just cleaned.
I realize that it would take a very long time to clean the entire carpet of this gray dust -- especially because of the poor performance of the vacuum cleaner. So I begin to question whether I should continue to work or just walk away from the project. After all, I wasn't convinced we should have to do anything after the presentation except leave! But I'm sure I am not going to reapply my efforts at vacuuming this huge expanse of carpet!
A shift of scene brings me into contact with The Manager -- a tall slender man in a very formal-looking suit. (I think they called store employees dressed like this "floorwalkers" back in the day.) He's miffed. Very miffed. And he's miffed at me -- or at least taking it out on me. He's waving his arms wildly -- looking as if he's trying to take off and fly. I don't think it has anything to do with the vacuum or the carpet, but I can't be sure about that. My notes say that The Manager was being very foul-mouthed.
All I know is that the carpet and whatever has The Manager so upset are just Not Our Problem.
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