John Wise

I started playing Mahjongg again recently and was reminded why I quit playing it last year. The game leads me into repetitious dreams, usually of some task that gets repeated ad nauseam, disrupting my sleep to such an extent that by morning, I’m more exhausted than rested. The dream is either sorting into some complex order of things that I am frustrated at the futility of the task and my ignorance as to how to speed the process so I can finally finish or like the Twilight Zone episode where the same scenario is lived out repeatedly: I am doing something over and over and cannot move beyond a certain point.

Well, this morning, I got lucky, and my last dream halfway broke me out of repetition, but in the dream, I had to go to prison. One moment, I am with Caroline; the next moment, I find myself among a group of prisoners on a rocky island in the ocean. Our landing spot is being hammered by ferocious waves. I am told not to worry as the island is too high for the waves to be of consequence, but I am watching a wave that comes close to spraying the flat rock surface we are standing on. Another wave, 60 feet tall, comes in over the previous one, and it is obvious that this one is coming my way. I grab a pole and hold on while the wave crashes over us. Dripping wet, we are ushered off the platform as it is now unsafe.

Next, I am driving a blue Hyundai down a long fenced-in driveway to the office complex on the far side of the island to finalize my transfer to this institution. I did find it slightly odd that my “real-life” car would be here. Only now does it begin to occur to me that I will not be able to go home today, tomorrow, or the next day. These people are serious. But why am I here? I am to be retrained in the American Way. Seems I drifted into deviancy, informational deviancy, to be precise. No excuse can be accepted that the materials I was in possession of could be considered artistic expression and collectibles; it is against the state. So, as in China during the Cultural Revolution, I am going to be reprogrammed; I will be shown my way back to being a true American.

But what about Caroline?

Forget about it; you are here for the next four years.

But I didn’t do anything!

You are an agent in possession of objectionable material and could be a danger to the state.

I am interested in intellectual activity, and I own obscurities for art and cultural reasons; I am an agent of curiosity!

But those subversive materials could hurt others, could hurt the state, and as you can see, they are hurting you now.

Oh my god. What am I going to do? Can I call Caroline? Ask her to wait for me for the next four years.

NO. When you could have put your life in patriotic order, you chose to be rebellious; now, we must help you become a good citizen.

Hey, this is like communist China!

Be careful; you could end up here for five years.

What do you have that incriminates me?

Take a look at this.

I am handed a book from a stack of what looks like scrapbooks. Someone has compiled photos, books, flyers, and materials that are said to be mine into these volumes. I recognize some of it, unfortunately, all Nazi-inspired motifs, but the communist stuff is definitely not mine.

I protest; this communist stuff is not mine! I am told that I am in denial and that this will add time to my stay in prison. Again, the horrid reminder that I am actually about to start serving a prison sentence, although I have never been to court, and now, worse, I start to panic about prison rape. The communist imagery is flipping by page after page; occasionally, something that was actually mine catches my eye. Why am I here? What is the ultimate purpose of pulling me off the street? Could it be that someone wants to witness me falling into humiliation?

This is where the dream is about to spin into repetition, as so many others do when playing that damned Mahjongg. I will roll over these questions or go over the images in the scrapbooks over and over and over again until they start to blur, and I get confused as to why I am doing this again and again. I wake up knowing I cannot play Mahjongg again.