The Public Face of Things

Date: 7/7/2018

I was visiting my mother in the city. She had a new apartment. I had been busy, distracted by a sort of flashforward and backward between timelines of my own. I kept flashing between a perfect city and a post apocalyptic one where the statue of liberty was recked and in ruins. I had been chasing spider all over town. It was a tiny normal black spider on a spider web. But it was very elusive. Anyway I took the time to visit my mother. I hadn't been here before and I was shocked at the state of the place. She lived in absolute squalor and filth. The apartment had no furniture except maybe a bed in the bedroom. The floor was covered in dirt and feces and a dead dog lay in the living room. She had a kitten but it was so weak and sickly it never moved. She had my little brother here. I was happy to see him, but the filth horrified me. The kitchen was just as bad and the bedroom. The entire place was full of dirt and shit and bugs. Finally a microscopic bug, one which should be microscopic and invisible, was actually the size of rats and climbed on me and attacked me. It was less an attack and more their legs were pointy and it hurt when they were on me. It was also scary since they were powerful and I couldn't get them off. The landlord called the exterminator and he came, but it wasn't just the bugs we could see, nor just her apartment. It was the entire building and these were very scary bugs. The guy wanted to burn the place to the ground. With her in it, apparently it was her fault. I got distracted by the spider and the city and my own flashing timelines thing but when I came back I had a girl come in to clean. Apparently she had her own cleaning service which visited once a day or once a week or something. I asked the girl privately how much it would cost to clean the entire apartment, as if it were show worthy, as if we were moving out. I just wantes the deepest clean possible. She said $150 and I agreed to pay it instantly. I also noted that was the cost of her coming to clean daily as well. The cost hasn't changed. Well I don't know if the girl ever came to clean but I finally was almost out the door, or in the door, and I got to see the apartment as everyone else saw it. As the real world saw it. It was actually a bustling Bakery front, with a crisp clean counter and a few tables to eat at, and a huge clientele and a clean looking kitchen. The Bakery was my mother's public face kind of. No one saw that degradation and squalor which was really under the surface. Which the apartment really looked like. ~ Later I am focused on a bowl of food. It's a pudding, with a lot of various things inside. I can't recall if I'm supposed to eat it or not supposed to be eating it but whatever I am supposed to be doing with it I'm doing the opposite. There are also bugs involved here too. I am either a bug or I am afraid of bugs. This part of the dream is foggy.