The Dreamseller: The Calling by Augusto Cury Page B

dreamseller gently corrected me, that warm smile and calm demeanor more effective than any physical punishment.
    “Julio, you’re a smart man, so you know that no artist owns his work. It’s he who interprets the art who gives it meaning. IfBartholomew thinks I’m the leader of an alien race, so be it. You shouldn’t worry. Generosity, not obedience, is what I want. Be generous to yourself.”
    Back then, I thought he misspoke and meant that I should be generous to Bartholomew. But during this journey I would discover that a man who isn’t generous to himself can never be generous to others. One who demands much of himself is a tyrant to others.
    Generosity was one of the most important dreams that he wanted to share with the world. The “normals” living in their cages, isolated in their own little worlds, had lost the indescribable joy that comes from giving, embracing, offering a second chance. Generosity was a word found in dictionaries but rarely in mankind. I knew how to compete but not how to be generous. I knew how to point out the ignorance and shortcomings of others, but not how to accept them. Seeing others fail pleased me more than my own successes. I was no different from politician who wanted to see the ruling party fail.
    After that careful lesson, I calmed down. But there was still the question of where we would be staying. Then the dreamseller pointed to the shade beneath the bridge and said, “This is our home.”
    I felt dizzy. Suddenly I began to miss the San Pablo Building. There were several torn mattresses strewn under the overpass and only filthy rags to cover us. There was one jug of water and we all would have to drink straight from the bottle. I had never seen such poverty. I thought, “This is the man who saved me?”
    It all looked so destitute that even Bartholomew protested. Now I was starting to like the guy. He scratched his head, rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating and said, “Chief, you sure this is your house?”
    The alcohol was wearing off and Bartholomew had begun to see reality. Even he had slept in better places. He slept in a friend’s tinyefficiency, in the back of bars and even in homeless shelters, but never under a bridge.
    “Yes, Bartholomew, this is my house. And we have a long night ahead of us.”
    Because everything the dreamseller said had another meaning, he wasn’t predicting a bad night’s sleep. We were in for more of the dreamseller’s eye-opening world.
    For dinner there was some stale bread and old crackers. I had hated fast-food hamburgers, but now I started to fantasize about them. After taking a few bites of the crackers, I decided to lie down. Maybe tomorrow I would wake up and find it was all a nightmare. I lay down on the lumpy mattress, rolled a piece of cardboard into a pillow, and rested my head—but not my racing mind.
    Trying to relax, I told myself, “OK, stay calm. You’re a sociologist. You
like
to study eccentric groups, don’t you? Now you’re part of one. It’ll be good for your academic career. At the very least, you’ll have one hell of a story to tell. Remember, ‘Victory without risk is a dream without value.’”
    Still, I couldn’t imagine what I was getting myself into. I had left the safe microcosm of a college classroom to live in the underbelly of society, a place completely foreign to a theoretical sociologist like me. My spinning mind wouldn’t let me sleep.
    But then I tried something else. I started remembering all the lessons I had learned next to the dreamseller, reliving each experience. I tried to think about everything that had happened hours earlier. The experience of following this stranger was so powerful that I thought less about the top of the building and more about my home under the bridge, less about suicide and more about my journey.
    And then it hit me. Everyone should set out like this, without a goal or a destination, at least for a day, searching for thelost pieces of