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."