I dreamed I was visiting with Trevor Moffat, the lead guitarist of my first teenage rock band. I had agreed to plastic surgery in which we would switch appearances entirely: faces, hair, etc. I was very sad about it, but sure I must have agreed for some good reason which I couldn’t remember. At different points in the dream, I also told various people I met that Trevor and I had exchanged names. People still seemed to recognize me.

Early in the dream, I got out of Trevor’s car at his modernist house and went to a Soviet pub. The place was full of brutish workers. I left my seat to ask the indifferent server for some French fries, and when I got back, a guy was sitting in my chair and had drank all my beer. I sat next to him, refusing to be intimidated. His friend, a guy across the table started talking to me. They were German. He was talking about people in northern British Columbia, mostly holed up little cabins, and I mentioned that yes, I knew the man he called The Master; I revealed that I knew his name to be Richard Teitelbaum. He corrected my pronunciation, but accepted what I was saying. We discovered we had other people in common. They were a little warmer to me after that.

At a late point in the dream, I forgot a woman’s name who recognized me even with Trevor’s face. I can’t remember if her name was Ruth or if that was the name I incorrectly called her. At her house, I got a look at myself in the mirror and who I actually looked like was Chris Batting (the lead guitarist of my second band). Outside her place, the Fraser River was flooding ominously—almost right up to her door.

I was on the roof of a hotel in New York with my friend Ryan Wugalter. We were  looking at the stars and talking, when suddenly there was an intense meteor shower. When it was over, we climbed down a long yellow ladder with a rickety fold-out section called a “keith.”   At the bottom of the ladder, we met up with several other people, mostly our friends from university. We all walked down the wide, cushy hotel halls to a Japanese restaurant that made you a pay a cover charge that was different for "public" or "private" seating; we paid for the cheaper public seating, and it meant we sat with strangers, so we lost a fair bit of our party at this point. The food was rows of little nubbins like plasticine. When we left, I had trouble getting all my correct checked stuff: bag, sweater. I had my laptop case with a shirt and a bunch of books, I think. There was a Japanese bookstore. I told the worker in the store that I couldn’t read Japanese, although I thought the lettering was beautiful.   Next I was eating breakfast in a ground floor apartment in New York when first my mom, and then a stand-in for my mom, had a new boyfriend who was demonic. He was a professor, and he had long, white goat ears. They disappeared after I complimented him on them. I decided to pray, which filled the room with a golden light, and as I continued, it caused the demon professor to melt into a greasy puddle, which eventually disappeared. There were also two little kids there who were demonically afflicted, and I prayed for them, but it was only partly effective.   inoticed on the deck or terrace that my wife was tied up and being tortured by a gang of youths. I brutally beat a few of them trying to save her, picking them up by the legs and swinging them, smashing their heads into hard surfaces.

The survival place started out as a hobo camp, but there were things for sale on the honour system. I was carrying my baby and we were doing okay, but we needed something like socks. Before this, we were in a room where my mom and my brother were. There was Lego on the floor, a little yellow building. My baby was there, too, and my main concern was taking care of, protecting him. I escaped into the woods with my baby—it was raining lightly. There was a very tall man whose stuff it was that was for sale. He gave or sold me something and shrunk down to a normal size. We went into a motel there on the shore of the lake. It was then that I was addressed by the name “Jack” but also realized that some people knew me as “Teddy” from an earlier time in my life when I had done something terrible—or perhaps done something I thought of as justified but which some people considered terrible. I walked through a huge complex that seemed to blend elements from hippie survival treehouse and rundown motel. My wife was there. My baby was not. The tall man was also gone. I realized that the place was being run by witches. I also realized it was the same place Teddy’s crimes had been committed, but most of the evidence of what the place really was had been covered over. I changed my hair, now extremely long, and instantly my face changed and I looked exactly like my sister. I was disguised. I showed my wife, who was at the mirror. She was not all that impressed. I escaped again into a rowboat with a woman from the Teddy era who sneered that she remembered me from then and knew what I had done. By way of denial, I said “I’m Jack,” and the rowboat now contained a somewhat unfinished-looking doppelganger of me as well, staring blankly and menacingly at the woman. “That’s Teddy.” I was on shore again, but in a car with my wife. It was still raining. We were going to a big, grey building to see about some kind of expensive medical procedure for her. When we got to the parking lot, the attendant sold us a day pass for $35. We only wanted a $5 one hour pass, so we were yelling at her, but she seemed apologetic. Inside, there was a smaller version of a common corporate coffee chain. The lineup was very long. I got in line.

I was wandering the streets of a large, modern American city I did not recognize. The whole city was underground. The buildings and streets were terribly dirty and rundown, and dimly lit by a greenish, diffuse light. It was very quiet and there were no people around.

Entering a warehouse, I stumbled upon a weapons training session of the Ku Klux Klan. They were shooting at mannequins with various kinds of firearms, as well as a hunting bow. Their leader, who looked a bit like Miguel Ferrer, approached me to tell me that he was interested in my help. He wanted me to use my connections with indie rock musicians to try to get them involved with spreading the KKK's message. I was immediately skeptical, thinking that I wanted no part of this plan, and besides, no indie rock musician I knew would be interested.

As I waited patiently for him to finish his spiel, I thought about how I could diplomatically pretend to agree with part of his philosophy, and then politely bow out of helping. I was suddenly ashamed when I remembered what the KKK were about; I realized that since I agreed with no part of their philosophy at all, it could only be my habit of hypocrisy that would incline me to take this diplomatic tack. I said something noncommittal and left.

Back on the deserted street, I began to wonder where I was, what city I was in. As I considered the subterranean condition of the city and the character of its inhabitants, it dawned on me that I was in Hell, which then seemed manifestly obvious. I became intensely afraid and woke up.