my dream this morning: before bed I had been reading JM Coetzee & the Torah. fell into sleep thinking of sympathy in its relation to forgetting -- a usual thing. I found myself in a bar fancier than any I'd normally be at, leaning over a richly-lit board of polished light wood, next to an elegantly-dressed older woman, homely & with a discombobulated, antsy look. immediately I wanted her to like me. there is a piece I do not remember; soon I was sipping islay & this woman, who may have been JMC's Elizabeth Costello, approving the president to me. (I do not much like JMC; I do somewhat like JMC.) she presented her sympathies backwards, starting with a defense of his worst policies. "I'm sure we're both grateful at least for the war in Iraq." I told her I was not. "ok then, his economic policies." & so forth. finally I became annoyed & strangely proud, & I sd, immitating but not quite telling the (waking) truth, "I was married for five years to an Arab woman. her grandfather's name was Habib. don't tell me abt politics." I woke up very glad, as I have for a long time now been having a hard time remembering my dreams, at the detail of my recall, and I credited this (superstitiously?) to my yesterday having given up coffee, of which it has for ten years been my habit to drink ten or more cups a day.