In the dream I have a teenage son who I’m worried about. He’s a musician and artist, always in his room practicing his guitar or painting, and lately he’s been having some kind of internal emotional issue that makes him very hard to reach. Lately we’ve been arguing bitterly over the tiniest things. After these arguments he usually storms into his room and slams the door, or storms out of the house and slams the door. He won’t appear again until late in the night.

There’s been another development in my son’s life. An intense writer friend of mine, a woman around my age who has been over to our house for tea a number of times, has begun to reciprocate my son’s crush on her. I’m a little off-put by the situation but also strangely relieved that she will be my son’s first sexual experience. It settles the question in a way that feels somehow familiar and reassuring. Still, I am not at ease. My friend is a strong, sensitive woman and like all writers, she’s prone to moods of her own. My son is physically and intellectually mature for his age, but can he handle the challenges of adult emotion, an adult relationship?

One evening my son and I have an especially bad argument. He packs his gym bag with several changes of clothes and storms out of the house. It’s clear I won’t see him again for several days, that he’ll be holed up somewhere with his paramour during that time.

My partner tells me there’s nothing to worry about, but still I worry. I think about the kinds of manias and delusions that can result when two artists in distress come together and pour their souls out to each other. I imagine blissful states of communion but also the potential for horror: madness, murder, a suicide pact. My partner tells me I’m being melodramatic, that these are not artistic anomalies but simple human facts of life.

We start to argue about this, but our quarrel is interrupted by a noise at the front door. It’s my son and my friend, emerged from their exile. There’s a large canvas propped up between them, a painting they made together to commemorate their affair. The composition is stunning, and from the exhausted look on their faces, I can tell that the work was dangerous and far from easy for them. My partner invites them in for something to eat. I feel relieved, and proud of my son.

As I wake up, these words go streaming through my head: Every art collaboration is a death-tempting experience.

An author friend sent me the bound printer's proof of her forthcoming book for me to read in advance. On the back cover, she'd pasted cutouts of several blurbs that had already been written about the book and published in various journals and blogs. It was a palimpsest of blurbs-- I could read only parts of the ones from before that were now covered by fresh blurbs. I started reading the manuscript: it was fantastic. The typesetting was dark and clear at first, then got more blurry and faded towards the end. Although the bound copy felt slender and light in my hand, I noticed that the book was a total of 647 pages long. I was impressed by the new paper technology that made this physical slightness possible, and intimidated by my friend's capacity for profilic output, a quality I completely lack in myself.

 

Then I was walking down the hallway of a place that looked just like the building of my old public high school. I was walking with Julia, another writer friend, and it was understood that we were headed towards the principal's office, where we would be interviewed in turn by the publisher of the forthcoming book about our critical impressions so far. I was nervous about this meeting, but Julia looked calm and collected, just like she always does; she had her copy of the printer's proof along with a stack of intelligent, insightful notes from her reading. I wondered if I should have gone to grad school, so that I could be professional and confident like her.

 

The publisher sat behind a heavy oak desk. She had a reputation for writing wild, ludic, ribald novels, but here she looked stern and severe, just like a high school principal. After interviewing Julia, she called me into her office and asked for my oral book report. I started to offer my impressions, then realized that I'd only gotten halfway through reading the manuscript before running out of time. I stumbled badly over my words. "And just how far did you get exactly?" the publisher demanded to know, peering at me over her disapproving spectacles.

Last night I had a dream, maybe it was a nightmare actually, that the iPad was really a wall-sized vanity mirror. You would hang it on the wall and gaze at your own reflection transfixed as you surfed the net or read the NY Times or played online tic-tac-toe or whatever. You would reach out with your index finger to touch the screen and meet your own reflected index finger coming out from the other side to touch you back, kind of like Adam and God in the Sistine Chapel.