Philosophy Quest

This was a fun dream to dream. I was starting university (something I have not yet done in my waking life) in a program where I'm required to take philosophy. I enroll in a class with a prof named Torquemada. Her classroom is in the dank, oppressive basement of a crumbling old building; her teaching methods consist of torturing her students, and instructing students on how to torture each other. If anyone screams "This isn't fair!" Torquemada snaps her riding crop, tightens her lips across her teeth, and says, "Fair doesn't matter. You have to take philosophy to graduate, and mine is the only philosophy there is. You can either accept that now, or keep repeating my class until you accept it." Because I am new, don't know any better and want to fit in, I believe her. I attend the class, all the while keeping my eye on the prize, course credit and the right to say I have learned "philosophy". In a few months I have really started to hate myself.

Then, one happy day, a friendly young woman strikes up a conversation with me, and when she hears I am in Torquemada's class, she shakes her head and says, "You've gotta get into a different class." She gives me a pamphlet with all the philosophy courses listed, points to one and says "This one's the best." For the first time, I know of an alternative to Torquemada, and I decide to go meet the teacher of the recommended class.

It's not so easy as going to her office and making an appointment; instead, I have to show up early one morning and join a safari of 10 or so other seekers for a trek on elephants. We all mount our elephants and head off on land a short ways, then we come to a lake. The elephants swim across with us perched on their backs, climb out on the opposite shore, and carry us off across country, through fields and forests, until we come to a huge 60's modernist building where we dismount our elephants and are greeted by a group of profs. There's a bit of mingling and conversation, and then someone says, "Okay, who's going on to meet the philosophy professor?" three or four of us put up our hands.

The profs tell us to get back up on our elephants and climb the staircase all the way to the top. We go round and round, lumbering on our elephants, and the higher we get, the older the building gets. The staircase changes from concrete and glass to carved mahogany paneling, and then finally at the top there's a chandelier and everything looks very Victorian. I go in to meet the professor and she looks Victorian too, in a comforting, grandmotherly, traditional kind of way. "Do you have your staff?" she asks. I don't. "You'll need your own staff or wand to continue," she says, and sends me off to find an appropriate stick. "Can elephants go down stairs as well as up?" I ask. "Yes," says the teacher, "but hold on tight, and yell at your elephant a bit, it helps to calm them down." So I head off back down the stairs, lurching and yelling at my elephant and wondering what to use for a staff. I think about my grandfather's handmade walking stick, the one that's shaped like a shillelagh; it's the closest thing I have to "my own staff or wand." Then, whaddaya know, I see the walking stick lying on top of a mahogany railing! So I pick it up and head back up to start my philosophy career.

And that's where the dream ends. They are seldom very literary.