In my dream I am aware that the real estate market has problems, but I can’t discern who is worse off, buyers or sellers. We are in the market for a house and so we are walking a neighborhood looking for the perfect backyard. We need someplace that is flat because it will be our retirement home. Our search moves back and forth between walking and studying an aerial view. Since the aerial view is in black and white and on paper, I use pinpricks to designate the property boundary lines. I also distinguish some lots by making pinprick textures and patterns, inserting the pin from the back of the paper. Each lot gets a different pattern that shows up in tiny white dots. Finally we see a house that has almost no front yard because the driveway slants off to the right between two houses.

After that I’m in a dentist’s office to get a tooth pulled. The office is furnished like a bedroom and the dentist, an Asian man, will operate on me while I’m in bed. He prepares himself by kneeling on the bed. He holds a pair of pliers in one hand and a syringe in the other. He is wearing a grey suit. The nurse is concerned that the instruments are not sterile, so she keeps splashing liquid on them. The nurse and dentist talk about needing to go down an inch to and inch and a half to extract the molar.