Searching Buddha

I'm on the Jersey turnpike, driving back home with my Mom. Traffic is really super slow, because we're nearing that idiotic place on the turnpike where the two separated highways merge back into one in a single lane. Finally traffic stops and stays stopped, so people start getting out of their cars and walking. We're the first to do so.

I quite practically fold up my car and place it into my handbag, which looks like Mary Poppins' bag, but in a more tasteful black.

We get out and walk and walk with masses of people until we cannot see the cars behind us. Finally, around exit 4, we reach a building that stretches across the turnpike. It's a grand old mansion and we go inside. Inside are dozens of shops selling sculptured ornaments, but the only ones I remember are Winnie the Pooh bears. An older man is in there with the face of Santa Claus, but I know that he is just a German immigrant who makes a living by selling his sculptures. My mom and I are alone and I lose her, but eventually I find her because the sculptor has opened the gate that was blocking the highway.

"I bet he did it because he's racist," I think. (My brain probably went there because of Robert Moses' designs with bridges over the state parkways, which were done for racist and classist reasons, which I was just telling my family about when they visited for the holidays).

I start walking back to get my car (my handbag is long gone), leaving my Mom at the gates of this weird mansion. I walk and I walk and I walk until I wake up...