Emptying the dishwasher as I explain to my ex that I've never been much for games of chance. Or strategy for that matter.

At work, the tech support guy explains the theory of natural selection to me. And finally I really understand it.

A young man's torso, nude, shot three times by self-healing bullets. Once in the belly, once in the ribs, and once just above the heart.

The shower is empty and there is a wraith in it.

My family checks in to a mountaintop hotel where we've stayed before. On the drive there, my cousin points out the steep ascent from the sea that he has made countless times on his motorcycle. But up in the hills the laws of physics are different. The bellhop finds that his elevator key won't unlock the outer doors of the elevator on the ground floor and shuffles off to find another. After waiting half an hour we decide to take the bus into town for dinner. There in the rustic valley town I see a guitar repairman who has set up shop in a small cafeteria and ask him to adjust the neck of my guitar to get rid of a buzzing on the fourth string. To calibrate his electric screwdriver he chips away at a small portion of the upper lefthand corner of the mural behind him. He finds nothing wrong with the guitar. When we get back to the hotel I submit a review of an album that came out four years ago to a website I stopped writing for three years ago. Only after doing so do I find that my review has been up for over five years under someone else's name. In the comments section I notice two self-promoting banner photographs, one for San Francisco lo-fi folk duo Ramon and Jessica, and the other for my own radio debut on April Fools Day.

As I fall asleep in the morning light my roommate tucks me in. Soon I am out walking the streets and looking down at the humid pavement but I sense that there has been no transition. I must be dreaming. Suddenly I wake outside a musicology convention and walk into the service entrance while the plenary session is in full swing. I find a solicitous Southern couple feeding their two teenage children and two young musicologists at their dinner table: it is easy to sit down at my place unnoticed and catch up on eating while the conversation continues. I notice bags of potatoes and carrots stacked behind the sink and wooden trays full of fresh greens and herbs where the implements should be. I say that I am not a musicologist but that I have played music with one, and there is silence as the dishes are washed. Over dessert I overhear that the family has a German shepherd meaning that to understand this dream I must ask: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

We all pile into an old blue sedan where we are joined by my brother who does not know that we are about to experience the illusion of perpetual descent. The fifteen-year old son is driving. We start down a country highway at a gentle grade with woods on both sides. As the car gains momentum the road drops more steeply into what seems like a wooded valley below until it becomes clear that we are snaking our way down a very large mountain. The road twists suddenly left then right during which at no point does the son take his foot off the accelerator and at the moment the car should have flipped if we had tried to keep both wheels on the road my brother and I find ourselves standing on a breezy hilltop cul-de-sac watching the blue sedan hurtle out into the cool valley air and sail on over the treetops without a sound. We turn around to find a large white van idling with the Southern family inside. "Going home?" I ask the mother absently. "Yes indeed."

My father shepherds my brother through a traditional Talmudic education while I wash the dishes. Later, I am woken by squabbling between my boss and my brother.

On my moped again, we are winding through the hills up a narrow road. When we reach the ridge and try to peek over, dusk falls sharply. And I realize that an atrocity is unfolding in the valley below. If we could get down before dawn we could at least stage a defense, but in the dark we would simply plunge off the first of many sharp turns. I dismount, I pace, I curse. And then a friend walks over to a post on the shoulder and flicks a little switch. Daylight.

My office is a train. We are thundering through the endless hours of the predawn on a vast circular track, like atoms in a supercollider. I shuttle between two railway cars. In the first, I work with a clerk to attend to the needs of an eminent man in decline. This involves sharpening the razors, mixing up the shaving cream with a horsehair brush, and filling a large metal bowl with lukewarm water. In the other car, I do my best to study under a hot incandescent light and eventually fall asleep under a large quilt. I am woken by a young nurse.