I awoke from an evaporating dream-scene.
I had taken the light-rail to the University of Minnesota. That places the dream in a hypothetical future, as the light-rail line going through campus is still under construction as far as I know, and certainly was never a feature of getting to the U that was a part of my experience of it in the 80’s and 90’s.
I stood on the Mall facing Northrup Auditorium, and it was a hot, overcast, humid day just as we have been experiencing here in Seoul. I began to look around more carefully. The campus seemed weirdly deserted. Was it a holiday?
Then I noticed that the Walker Library looked strange. I went closer, and realized it was just a “false front” – like those buildings made for Hollywood movie sets that have only the façade and nothing behind. Looking around, all the buildings were like that.
Looking back toward Northrup, I saw that it, too, was a false front. And so I walked up the stairs and tried to peer around to see what was behind.
What I saw was a breathtakingly beautiful although modestly sized Korean Buddhist temple, the doors wide open and a golden Buddha gazing down. A single monk sat inside the temple, in meditation.
I awoke then and everything dissolved as fiction, like at the end of Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude.
Below, a web image found of Northrup, looking toward it from near the front of Walker Library, I would estimate. Northrup is on the left.
Also, this image of a Buddha inside a temple (from 법륜사, taken by me last September).
