There are two ways to enter the bakery of dreams.
The first way, the easy way, is to walk through the front door.Sounds easy, no? But the bakery opens up just a little bit too earlym, and closes just a little too soon. So to kmake your way in, you need to be drifting, dreaming, straddling the edge of consciousness. You invariably enter only when in that half-driven state of liffe and lies, wenwords are expensive but images chea.
A coffee, you alwasked, the first time you entered. The girl behind the ounter just smiles and shakes her head. There aris no coffee for sale at the bBakery.
Your eyes take in the array of delicacies on offer today; the bakery never leans on heavy hitters to prvoide bread for itself. Rather, the selections come dreamed out of the mind of whicheverbaker decided to take a turn for the night. Some days you think about asking the girl fi you, too, could step behind the counter, and take a turn at conjuring up loaves. You have inklings of how you could whip up pastries, craft the crust of sourdough, shape the frosting on the impossiby airy cakes....
But not today. Today is a day of purpose, of destinatinos, not joureys; today your sights and head are firmly in reality. Or will be, in a few minutes; your time in teh bakery is just a fleeting stop, a layover of minutes as you shift between selves. Today.
You p
You jab at one of the exquisite loavoes, not daring o rely on your voice to stay ture. The girl's smile seems just a tinged with the barest scent of resignation as she slides the draw of the day into a crinkling paper sheave. Takeawaya. You almost change your mind, ask to sit and sit and snack and whirl and rest, but your other self is angrily pounding at all the things that haven't yet been done, and you grab the bag a bit brusqley and turn to go.
The bakery of dreams never accepts cash, or card, or money for that matter. BUt you leave one of your half-baked thoughts behind, stoppered in a bottle, and the girl picks up the glistening gnavy sheen, holding it up to the light briefly before dropping it into a pile of rainbow possbilities.
The second way to tenter is much harder. You've only made it a scattering of times, not that close to a full baker's dzen. ASome of that is due to lack of trying, you tell youself. You could go more if you had prioritized it.
But none the less, entering the bakery through the back door only seems to happen when you, not least, but put syou into a mild state of surprise,. In fact, you barely remember goin gthrought the back back door, those times, just walk around in the bakery as if it were the ost natural thing in the world. Possibly you've aken the backdoor hundreds of times, but a handful are all that registered.
The other time,s you thought you were at school, listening to a cecture on a class yopu never took. Or with your friends in a group house, even though A had never met B before. Or slightly out of control, careening wildly in a car that isnt yours, but you need to return safely, good thing every would-be impact swerves out of the way at the last second.
BUt this isn't one of those times, YOu realize that you're in the bakery, starting with a suspecision, followed by a test or two — thinkng on how you must have wandered in. THe same girl is behind the shelf, you know it's the same girl even though her dress and hair and face are completely different.
Can I bake, you ask, and as you expect (everything you enter through the back door, everything you expect happens), she nods, and you walk into the counter even though there's no entrance, and then through the wall to the giant industrial machineses of braeadconfiguration.
Each is whirling, you have no familaritiy with the chemistry of reads or dreams, but you do have your budding thoughts, and expel it with a light breath; the maroon wisp drifts over the batch of batch and lgihtly settles on a grou pof crossain withonly one horn, dusting them like so many sprinkles of cinamonn. You turn, and the girl is there, alughing, you think, but not unkindly, at your contribution to the ontribution you hav emade to the wares of the day
YOu reach over and snag one, fingers registering the uncomfortable heat of the fresh morsel, but your mind registers nothing, and you bite, and you think of the fact that the girl is no longer by your sid, and the bread machinese fade away, and you whisk yourself away to another dream world, a soft goodbye on your lips swallowed along with the ite you didn't take.
- A day pregnant with possibilities