I wake to a note in my own hand: "SLUG TO CASHEK: FIND 32X STEAM BRAT." And underneath: "Frostware."

On a date I stumble into a sunny grove with lots of balloons and little tents, BBQs and a giant trampoline. It's a Meetup of Meetups. A woman with a camera assumes that my SHUT DOWN GUANTANAMO shirt is meant to attract the likeminded and asks for an interview. I tell her I'm the only one of my kind that I know but that it's no wonder because I'm pretty sure they don't allow Meetups in that part of Cuba. She says she works for Ken Wilbur. Across the field the busiest place is the Dream Tent. A man named Kumar is patiently explaining how they bang on Tibetan drums to wake the dreams, guide each other through what they mean, and then act them out in something called "Dream Theater." They are all disciples of a Dream Master named Robert Moss who sounds like a good upstate Jungian to me. We walk on to the lake and lie down in another field as a single white balloon disappears into the sky.

The black iron gate that locks me out of my own house.

A strong rebuke delivered upwards with a twist.

The fridge is an elevator but it fits one and is agonizingly slow. When I walk out I look down at my hands and think, "I'm staring at my hands." As they go in and out of focus I realize that either I'm dreaming or I need new contact lenses, and in so doing seem to have reasoned my way out of a lucid dream. Then I wake into a gravel road with a parked minivan containing the seven members of the black a cappella group I used to sing with. I open the passenger door to take an imitation muted trumpet solo then wave goodbye. And as I hit the campground I hear the strains of a country hook I know is mine to use: "...with Hank Williams hanging in the air."

White sediment on the window pane.

A drawing room of living silhouettes, framed and backlit.

My dental hygienist suspects I think she's racist.

The woman at the next table holds up a checkbook filled in with a series of actions she will take if anyone tries to humiliate her in public. I sound out the whole thing slowly then make eye contact; she smiles. When my family starts chatting with her husband, we learn that they have been contracted to remove the floors of our house to make for a single vaulted space from the basement to the attic. There is some disagreement about when this will happen. What is the what? my mother asks. This isn't the Washington Post, says my brother. So we walk out for some faster food.

That man is all jacket and no pants.

I just want to go to sleep with my honey. First a repairman wants to repair the door. So we go out to sleep on the porch. But the porch is right on the sidewalk and surrounded by a dozen repairmen who want to repair the sidewalk. So se go back indoors. Now there is no one around and I tell her good night and I love you. But it's the first date so we have to talk about that. It was just something I was saying because we can finally go to sleep, I say. I just want to go to sleep with my honey.

An upright wooden man at an upright wooden table.

Some black kids challenge the chess club to a dance in the auditorium. The teachers have set up four tennis nets between the two basketball hoops. After some milling around and paper airplane folding, one kid tosses the ball across the floor and the game is on. It's a passing game since no one can dribble for more than three or four steps before running into a net. Some kids have figured out how to get more distance by flinging themselves back into one of the nets as they hurl the ball.

Secretly FedExing a number of leatherbound graphic novels to my own wife. Under the covers on an unbuilt room on the 36th floor with someone else. Attending the premiere of a play, based on John Bayley's Elegy for Iris, by the author of the graphic novels.

A woman loves me but can't tell me so until the end of the festival when her man leaves for good. Still I get a hasty kiss or two in the weak moments. At services I leave my friends waiting fifty yards away and get a close seat under the awning next to a beautiful girl who doesn't know me. But the rabbi is a new age narcissist and I wander off before the second half begins. More hasty kisses.

The boss is onto me. He asks me to reorient my desk in our little open plan beach front cabin; I comply to deflect suspicion from my time theft. On a break in the living room, I see a jazz pianist from Maine who thinks it's tacky to host Yom Kippur at home; he's going to temple thank you very much. When I return there is a midterm exam in progress. On stage the cast and crew of our excellent variety show fail in their attempts to build a giant human pyramid. Outside the beach is incredibly steep and the tide is in, making a sort of vicious halfpipe for surfers. For those who are brave enough to catch a wave, the real ride comes when the wave drains back out into the sea. Most people are wiping out severely when they're swept back out, but least they don't have to paddle through the break again.

Just before the bishop is murdered, I'm trapped in the back seat of a parked stolen car with Steve Buscemi in the driver's seat and Woody Harrelson in the passenger's seat. Someone shoots Woody in the back with a pellet, causing him to lock a blade into Steve, which means Steve has to climb out onto the hood and hang on to the rear view mirror and promise to blow the whole garage to smithereens within fifteen minutes if no one is willing to say he's sorry. There is a tense silence. I step out to sleep in a large aseptic waiting room with a hundred of my mother's friends and about twenty roaming cats.

Chris Farley and David Spade are playing ping-pong out the window of my hotel room with some kids in the courtyard. Not waking me is part of the game, evidently, but they're not very good at it. So I push the buzzer next to my bed. When the nurse arrives she tells me there has been no ping pong — maybe I was dreaming it? — and offers to close the windows. When I wake in my own cold bed the windows are open and the fan is on.

My father sustains an outdoor operation at the field hospital under rolling grassy hills. On an overlooking plateau there is a reunion I will have to miss for now. I have to join my best friend's little brother to accompany a puppet show with a half-filled bottle of soda and a little plastic stick. Later I see a Mexican hurl a package into the empanada cart near my father's operating table. When someone inside draws a kitchen knife I start to run away but before I can take three steps the Mexican has drawn a pistol and shot my chest wide awake.