It is very early in the morning, in the hour or so before dawn. I hear Moonie meowing and scratching at the door, so I roll out of bed and go downstairs to let him in. The light is dim, yet through the glass door I can see that he is not alone: a handsome sliver-grey wolf stands nose-to-nose with him on the deck by the door. Although he doesn't appear threatened by the wolf's presence - indeed, they seem merely to be checking one another out - the thrill of seeing a wolf at my door is tempered with some concern for Moon. Careful not to make any sudden movements, I go quietly to the door and crack it open just enough to let him slip through. I look at the wolf for a moment, then open the door further, sit on the stoop and extend my hand. The wolf is wild, and I am not afraid. He licks my fingers delicately, then I begin to pet him. Everything in my house and outside looks exactly as it does in waking life, yet as I pet the wolf I begin to wonder if this is all happening in a dream. If so, I want it to continue. I awaken here in the pre-dawn light.

I am in a brightly lit white room with a few other people. One of them is a Gypsy man, maybe in his early 40s, who looks and feels very familiar to me - where do I know him from? First I'm speaking with someone else, but aware of his presence because he seems to be watching me. Them I'm suddenly speaking with him - how did that happen? I tell him that I, too, have Romani ancestry, through my birth father's lineage. Upon telling him this, it dawns on me that he IS one of my ancestors. A sudden glint in his eye tells me that he's aware of my recognition of who he is (as if he's been waiting for me to catch on). Now I'm aware that I'm dreaming. He holds up his right hand to give me a high five. As soon as our palms touch, he clasps my hand firmly in his, and I jolt awake.

Two disjointed dream fragments:

1) A handsome woman with long black hair streaked with gray and tied back stands before a wash basin. She kneads a garment in the water, then gathers it up in her hands and holds it high above her head, wringing it out. The water cascades into the basin as she intones "ay de mi - los dolores son hechos de manchas..."

2) A woman is seated on a low, three-legged wooden stool, surrounded by 6 other women in an asymmetrical grouping, variously kneeling in front of and beside, and standing behind her. They are in a darkened room, and eerily illuminated from an unseen source. The scene looks theatrical, though it's not theater, and I'm simply witnessing rather than participating. The woman on the stool sings a lament, and the others join in the chorus. It is plaintive and beautiful. I don't remember the words - it might have been in another language.

"Why on earth are we painting the walls stark white?" This is what I'm thinking as I dip my roller in the paint and slather it on the wall before me. I'm wearing a long, cream-colored silk wraparound skirt printed with pale pastel flowers. It occurs to me that this is the wrong garb for painting, since it will probably get ruined by paint drips. There's another woman here, painting the wall adjacent to mine - a stunning, slender black woman with a large afro. We both dip and roll without saying a word. At the exact same moment, as if by design, we both set down our rollers and step back to assess our work. I'm still thinking how boring it is to paint the walls white. Suddenly the other woman shakes her head violently, and a rain of bright purple paint flies out of her hair, landing in big splotches on me, on the walls, everywhere. We look at each other and laugh.

Dream # 2:

Some of the last words I wrote before coming to this place were "with wings." With or without wings, I now find myself flying over a rugged desert landscape. Make that without wings. I look at my outstretched arms and see that they are indeed arms, not wings. Now they're stretched out to the side, now palm-to-palm in front of me, now held close to my sides. Yes, this is effortless!

Soon I lose interest in how I'm flying and focus on the rapidly changing landscape below. I swoop down low over a boulder field and wonder how it would be if all the rocks were the color of lapis. Instantly they change to a deep, luminous blue. Now I'm flying high over waterways coursing through an emerald forest, now over an ancient city.

I'm suddenly aware of the precariousness of flight. A disembodied voice says "you know, this is a dream." Out loud I say "you know, I can do this in my waking life too," and awaken here.

Dream #1:

I am reading Pedro Páramo, whether the novel or the play I'm not sure. But this much I know: there is an elusive passage that appears and disappears. Sometimes it's there, sometimes not. But it changes something about the book/play, deepens one's understanding of it if one is lucky enough, or maybe astute enough, to catch it. I'm sitting here reading the book/play intently, and Sidney is here in the room with me, sitting in his comfortable chair, waiting to see if I catch the passage. Suddenly I see it, and it's as if a light has lit up in my head. Only now, as I look up from the book in excitement to tell him, he has vanished from his chair, as readily as the passage itself and the ghostly inhabitants of Comala.

Screep, screep, screep - it's 2:11 a.m., and I'm abruptly roused out of the dream when my car alarm suddenly and mysteriously sounds outside.

I am in a place that looks and feels familiar. The air here is thick, almost gelatinous, and it, too, feels familiar. I sit at a round table in the corner of a room painted creamy yellow and filled with light. Although I am right-handed, a pen is poised in my left. There is a large sheet of paper on the table before me, and it is filled with strange words made with letters I don't fully recognize, though I apparently wrote them. There is an extravagant aloe vera plant in a round terra cotta pot, and nothing else. A bird sings urgently outside.

A phone rings. Suddenly the receiver is in my left hand instead of the pen. I look at the caller i.d., which says "Neruda." I am astonished, and wonder how and why Neruda would be calling me from beyond the grave. I hesitate for a moment, then press the "talk" button. The sound on the other end is scratchy and distant. A barely audible male voice speaks my name, then something else I have trouble hearing or understanding. The only word I recognize, or perhaps remember, is "estilo," as in "stylus," and also "style." The line goes dead. I marvel at having heard Neruda's voice like that.

On the table in front of me now is a glass jar containing colorful fragments of vitrified tile decorated with glyphs and designs. A bright azure blue is the color that stands out most. I awaken here and remember the Spanish word for "tile" - "azulejo". "Azulejo," I say, "azulejo," again and again.

Looking out across this vast urbanscape, reminiscent of São Paulo, concrete high rises as far as the eye can see, I wonder how it's come to this. I'm very high up, on the open-sided top floor of a building undergoing further construction to make it taller still. In fact a good number of the buildings seem to be undergoing similar upward construction, evidenced by the huge cranes on top that swing around dropping steel girders into place with a clang. A fierce wind blows, giving me the sensation that if I don't retreat into the lower, finished section of the building, I'll blow right off the top.

I'm inside now, but a more imminent danger threatens. I'm on the hit list of some sinister agency that's hunting down dissenters and "disappearing" them. This, it turns out, is part of the purpose of the cranes on top of the buildings - the crane arms swing around and pluck dissenters out of the buildings, then deliver them to the head of the agency, a shadowy figure who inhabits one of the buildings.

A dark-haired woman in a white blouse and gray skirt comes rushing in. She speaks to me in Portuguese, telling me to come quickly. I follow her to another floor below that has no windows. It is dark, damp-smelling, and apparently safe, at least for now. She tells me to wait here, then rushes out as quickly as she appeared. I wait quietly in the dark, my heart pounding. The only sound now is that of my own breathing. I awaken here, and the sense of menace slowly dissipates.

"Hold out your hand," I say. "I have what you need." My directness alarms you.



I hold up my left hand, and a liquid red cord spills from my fingertips. "See - a scarlet penumbra," I say, drawing out the "num" and feeling the palpability of the syllable on my tongue.



I drop the cord into your open right palm. Although you say nothing, I can see that its substantial weight and warmth surprise you. I take one end and wrap it around your little finger.



"There," I say emphatically, "you know what to do," and awaken here.

George Quasha is hosting a call-in radio contest in which he recites a line of verse from a well-known poem, then challenges listeners to call in with the correct next line of verse. The first person who calls in with the correct response gets a prize, plus a crack at another poetry challenge with a more obscure poem.

I'm at home listening to the program on the radio, but somehow simultaneously seeing George doing the program in the radio studio, as if the very act of listening allows me to see everything, which feels perfectly natural to me.

So I'm sitting here listening/seeing, and George begins the first challenge with the following line of verse, which he says is from Shakespeare:
"If your true love you find not..."

He gives out the call-in number (a variation on his waking life number, with a different area code), and waits for the calls to come in.

I know instantly what the correct second line of verse is:

Try, try again"

I grab the phone to call. But things keep going wrong: first the light on the handset goes out, so I can't finish punching in the number and have to start over; now the line suddenly goes dead; now I press the wrong number and have to start over, and on and on. At first I'm feeling anxious and frustrated by all these stymied attempts to get through, but this feeling suddenly gives way to a recognition of the absurdity of it all. I start laughing even as I keep trying to call, then really start cracking up when alternative second lines start popping into mind spontaneously as alternatives to the "correct" one.

The only one I remember now is:
"If your true love you find not..."
"For godssake, just look out the damn window"

Soon I'm laughing so hard I can't even try to punch in the number anymore. I laugh myself awake.

I'm at what must be a zoo watching these strange animals that are perfectly round. They have big saucer-like eyes and walk upright on long, skinny legs with knobby knees. I can't figure out what they are, and from my vantage point I can't even tell if they have fur or feathers. It almost looks as if they're in a husk, which makes them look more like coconuts on stork legs than either birds or mammals. They're strutting about, and disconcertingly silent, as there's no sign of either beak or mouth from which they might utter a sound. Something seems really off about them, and I feel vaguely disoriented just looking at them, though nobody else seems to be affected so.

As I start to walk away I see there are some discarded "husks" from the creatures behind their enclosure, so I go over to investigate. Even as I look more closely, I can't tell if they really are natural husks, or costumes made out of papier machê. I start imagining that it's all a hoax, and that the "animals" in the enclosure are really miniature circus people dressed in these round husks, and that they're walking on stilts. But wait - stilts with knee joints? I wake up not knowing.

Sidney's Absence in Chuck's Presence:

Here I am in a sterile hotel conference room in Chicago, before an assembly of dark grey suits and tight-looking women in black pumps and pantyhose. I'm dressed resplendently, though inappropriately, I suddenly realize, in a floor-length Mongolian deel made of emerald green silk. I'm here to give a marketing presentation on the new book by Sidney Goldfarb that we just published at Station Hill.

My only anchor in this odd, uncomfortable context is Chuck Stein, planted meditatively on a chair to my right, looking for all the world like a Bodhisattva.

I begin to speak.

"Here," I say, "is the book." I hold up a copy of Rushes of Tulsa, feeling comforted by the placid cow and hovering chair against the open blue sky on the cover. Immediately a woman sitting front and center interjects in a peevish tone, "well how do we know the author really exists?"

"Of course he exists!" I reply emphatically. "Here's the book. He's the one who wrote it."

"Then why isn't he here?" someone else calls out.

"He is," I say defensively, "I just stopped by his room on the way down."

With this last statement I stop in my tracks, suddenly realizing that I didn't actually see Sidney in his room, only that he had been staying there. I look over at Chuck pleadingly, hoping he'll back me up. Chuck sits there silently beaming a beatific smile.

Then a sudden thought occurs: while in Sidney's room, I had taken a pair of pants he had obviously just been wearing. The pants are magically in my hands now, still warm and suffused with Sidney's presence, as if he had just that moment stepped out of them. Now I'm no longer dressed in my deel, but in a supple bodysuit reminiscent of a scuba suit. I hold up the pants to show the skeptical audience. Looking at the pants - made of hideous tan & blue plaid cloth - I think, "my god! I can't imagine that Sidney would actually wear such a thing!"

I now step into the pants and pull them up over my bodysuit. They're gargantuan on my small frame, so I gather the surplus fabric around my waist and cinch it tight with the belt, which is fortunately still there, laced through the belt loops. The pant legs fall in a baggy cascade down my legs and pool up at the hems. But the garment is now fastened securely around my waist, and I begin to laugh and dance gaily as if this were a street carnaval in Brazil rather than a marketing presentation in a stuffy hotel in Chicago. Chuck sits silently beaming. I awaken here with a giggle.