In the following blog
post, I would like to relate for my readers the details of a certain intense
dream reverie I had the other night.
On the afternoon before the dream I was walking through my neighborhood and I passed the popular pastry seller Dunkin Donuts. Normally I take no notice of this purveyor of sweet rolls, and I am personally impartial towards these pastries. Yet Dunkin Donuts must have changed something about its interior design because as I looked abstractedly into its window I glimpsed a few seconds of a peculiar video being projected on a screen alongside the giant food menu.
On the afternoon before the dream I was walking through my neighborhood and I passed the popular pastry seller Dunkin Donuts. Normally I take no notice of this purveyor of sweet rolls, and I am personally impartial towards these pastries. Yet Dunkin Donuts must have changed something about its interior design because as I looked abstractedly into its window I glimpsed a few seconds of a peculiar video being projected on a screen alongside the giant food menu.
Though I saw it out of the corner of my eye, I was struck
by one special quality of the video, the grandiose manner
in which the doughnuts in the video were being be-sprinkled by slowly-falling confetti, or sugary snowflakes, or I
know not exactly what, but they looked rather like sublime marshmallows covering the doughnuts. In any case, later that night as I lay asleep
I had the following dream.
In the dream I beheld a heavenly realm that very much resembled
the inside of my neighborhood Dunkin Donuts store, which was in the dream represented
as a heaven wherein doughnuts of all classifications were the sole inhabitants.
High amidst this ethereal canopy, fresh doughnuts were carried in on platters every
morning from some location outside--- though no one truly knew wherefrom---and
then laid out most precisely and reverentially upon their effulgent
display cases. They were enthroned almost inaccessibly beneath glorious lights. Most magnificently
they lounged upon the finest tissue paper, as if betwixt the angelical and
human kind, like some sugary putti, while
attended to and pampered zealously by a group of non-doughnut servants. 'Twas a hive
of doughnut activity this place, or rather inactivity----no matter, 'twas a very hiving thing.
In such state of sublime repose the little pastries lived out the greater part of their existence.
Notwithstanding the varieties of dainties to be found here--such as Glazed doughnuts, Chocolate doughnuts, Strawberry Frosted doughnuts, Boston Kreme
doughnuts, Glazed Chocolate or Blueberry Cake doughnuts, Old Fashioned doughnuts,
among others--- notwithstanding the variations, I say, not one pastry was permitted
to be treated differently than any other. All doughnuts were held to be equal
in the eyes of their Creator, as was signified too by their relatively even pricing, as established by their caretakers. No doughnut hierarchy could exist here;
each doughnut savoring the Holy Rest of the Almighty Creator in equal
proportions.
The little cakes were so worshipped by their caretakers
that the strictest rules were enforced to protect them from suffering theft or
any kind of soiling or defilement. And should any of these measures be even
momentarily relaxed the heaviest consequences were held in store for the workers
who violated the rules. Truly, the
doughnuts were reaping the never-fading fruit of pure delight in this paradise.
Yet the only chink in their armor was the fact of the human
customers; whence arises the notion of doughnut mortality itself. In my vision I beheld as those human creatures who dropped by on regular basis would select one or more
pastry, and after paying money, would leave the store with their sugary purchase. Alas, the doughnuts had no way of knowing what happened to them once
they were thus transported away. As no reason or motive could
be inferred from the customers' behavior that would explain, for example, why
one person preferred a Powder doughnut while another preferred Glazed, or why either one desired
doughnuts at all---that is, as no explanation could be
found out, the doughnuts regarded the human customers with the same dreadful feelings with
which we take account of death. For it was conclusively held that no
doughnut ever returned back to the display case once taken away by a customer; but they were duly replaced by another doughnut.
Considering this, the little pastries had but one wish
in the world, a wish for immortality---and one day, a miracle of rare device, by some alteration to the state of
things, the doughnuts found themselves in a topsy-turvy world indeed. For now they were eating the human customers, as if the doughnuts had grown a mouth and acquired the will power to arrest any human on the street and eat
him without explanation or ceremony. And what think you were the consequences
of this switch-over upon the doughnuts? As you may well imagine,
their health declined sharply; and they started putting on unhealthy weight. In other words, they started becoming fat, lazy, self-loathing
creatures, like the food they were eating.
But the idea of doughnuts gaining weight from eating
humans was so repulsive to me that I was forced to end my reverie, lest it turned into a real nightmare. I managed to wake myself up. I was much relieved
to recognize that everything I had witnessed was but a
fancy of my imagination, knowing full well that nothing so abhorrent as the
notion of doughnuts eating humans for their sport--or any similar super-satirical
notion---could ever enter the mind of the Almighty Creator.
