Night after night for months now I've had a variation of the same dream. I'm in a school. I'm usually the teacher. The whole world has come. We learn in rooms of windows but no door and no walls. We are speaking in a language that no one has heard before but which everybody understands. There is one moment of a high wind blowing and one moment of sunlight brightening more and making the scene hard to make out.

There are more women than there are men.

There is an animal -- usually a four-legged animal.

At some point in the dream, somebody always comes back to life and someone won't come into the room.