# [D27:4M] Vision: [[The Soldier is Smiling]] Hexagram: [[Twenty Seventh Hexagram]] Trials: [[Twenty Seventh Trial]] Archetypes: #television #house #face #white #teeth #hands #mouth #ears #feet #soldier #drum #eye #blackshoe July 17th, 1968 1. In the dream, I had lost my soul and went looking for it in the underworld, as one does  when one's soul goes missing. The underworld appeared to be a television  news station. I came into a glass office where I found my colleagues gathered around  a large oak conference table.  A man with a sallow buck-toothed grin at the head  of the long table, whom I knew to be Director of Operations, asked me for my report.   A 1960's television set on a high shelf behind him showed the war.  Men burned  in napalm and one of them, smiling a little, said, _The houses will be filled with flowers. All debts_  _will be paid._  When I turned again to the director, his face glowed white where he sat at  the far end, as if beneath stage light.  He perspired with daunted profusion, caged in his  own teeth, which appeared almost ready to shatter under the inanity of the masterpiece.  He seemed to make a sucking sound and, with a finger, beckoned me toward him. 2. Laughter came from among my colleagues at the table and from all those outer others  whose hands and faces pressed against the glass behind us.  Underneath it all  came the sound of sucking, which emanated from behind those big buck  teeth of his as he beckoned me toward him.  He put his mouth to my ear as I approached.  _If you want to keep your job_, he said in the midst of all the laughter, _you'll kiss my feet._  3. His buck teeth humiliated me and I began to bend down.  Glancing up at the television again, I saw a soldier drumming.  He was thin and smiled vacantly, and his eyes fixed in the distance like one who’s been fasting a long time.  I didn't know what I did for a living  here. The black shoe was a perfect mirror in which I could see my own image and the glow  of the TV behind me, the gaunt form in it of the drumming soldier. My worst fear  was to kiss the shoe, for it would mean that I was nothing.  Yet having no choice, I kissed it  and was nothing, and the laughter ceased, for nothing remained to keep my colleagues hoping.  They seemed to wonder whether more should not have happened. 4. Returning to my feet, I re-tucked and straightened my shirt, and, looking down at  the seated director, said, _I came here looking for my soul._ The director smiled warmly  as if relieved.  My colleagues bowed around the table in quiet prayer, as did the others  outside the glass. The soldier continued his drumming.  _Since you are nothing now_,  the director said from his chair, _you are ready to reclaim it._  He leaned way back and hoisted  one leg onto the table, revealing the smooth and treadless bottom of his brand new shoe.   It appeared as though it had never taken a single step in the director’s life,  even those steps which would have been necessary for arriving here now  from wherever it was they might have begun.