I have a recurring dream about loose teeth or teeth falling out. I guess it's not so much a recurring dream as it is a recurring motif. The dream plods along and suddenly I notice loose teeth in my mouth, and anywhere from one to all of my teeth come out. Well, last night, I had the most disturbing dream of this genre, if you will. I was at a basketball game with some friends. It seemed to take place in a crumbly place like the old Boston Garden, except smaller. Anyway, we were trying to get beer. I got a huge Warsteiner in a large stein. And, true to form, I noticed my teeth getting loose. Not just that, but my whole lower set of teeth were coming out. I pulled out a crude, metal denture -- nothing more than a wire frame with teeth, really -- and boggled that there was nothing in my lower jaw except for one loose tooth. It was crooked and as thick as a pencil lead. I wiggled it with my finger and pulled it out. I could feel the sensation of my upper teeth on my sensitive lower jaw's bare gums. Very disturbing.

February Dreams

1

I travel with family, my siblings and their spouses and some of their children, my wife, and my mother, in her current, confused condition. We ride in a long bus, all of us headed to an alternate universe where my father, still a young man, lives in Toronto.

We don't arrive.

2

My father appears a few nights later, his health as it was when he first began failing.

He awakes, back to his older self, as from a dream.

3

I never followed the Lone Ranger in any form. I know only that which any pop culture junkie would: white hat, black mask, silver horse, faithful Tonto, and the William Tell Overture. But I dream I'm in what appears to be a drainage ditch, watching someone film a modern-day version of the old time yarn.

The next day my wife and I visited an old warehouse where various dealers peddle antiques and collectibles and bric-a-brac; we haven't been since, I think, the summer. I found a Gold Key Lone Ranger from the 60s, and a Dell Adventures of the Lone Ranger's Horse Silver from the 50s.

I didn't buy them.

4

I cycle downtown during an uncertain season. I encounter a colleague of mine; she rides a tricycle up Dufferin. I take to my feet and walk home, the route part of my mental landscape and not difficult to dream. It changes, however, as I near my house. I pass a store with puzzle displayed in the door. It's an image of a person on movable blocks. If the portions are not assembled correctly, part of his body disappears, like the thirteenth chinese warrior or the vanishing leprechaun. With neither motive nor feeling, I grab pieces of the puzzle and continue walking. A block later and halfway across a busy street I realize I must return them. The owner hasn't noticed the theft, but the item has become a different puzzle, a tiny 3-D human body, a mustachioed, top-hatted ringmaster. I return the pieces (also transformed) by pretending to solve it, and also drop some tiny toy animals that have found their way into my hand along the way. As I twist and turn and relocate pieces of the figure his legs disappear but words form. They create a stunningly clever pun that has something to do with the detrimental effects of war.

I leave the tricky shop and find the license plate from my first car. In the dream-world there's now a used car dealer off the most upscale section of Richmond and my now battered vehicle appears partially buried at the edge of the incline that leads down to their lot.

Of course I cannot remember the ringmaster's words upon waking, and so either I created the most amazing pun while asleep which I've now forgotten, or my brain tossed up world salad and pretended it was wit.

5

I'm standing in the first-floor hallway at work. I perceive a projection against a wall in one room, an image of an ornate ring carved with images of Solomon's Temple and Masonic symbols, and the words "Adam" and "Eva." Some people discuss this icon.

A disaster strikes the world. Countries flood. Cities vanish. People die. I receive letters from middle eastern writers whose books bear the titles of Vonnegut novels. Europe has become a small scale model; England largely consists of a supermarket where several survivors live. In a boat moored outside France, "Daffy Duck" keeps a low profile and guards a plastic package of pasta. He looks not like Warner Brothers 'toon anatinae, but rather a dark human dwarf with a duck's bill.

A bartering system replaces the world's economies.

I'm back in the original hall at work; the worst has passed. A colleague says she didn't know about the disaster because she spent that weekend in her apartment.

6

My mind restages D-Day, a four-color, technicolor reimagining, focussed and heroic. Bloody battles across Fortress Europe become a single assault on a central locale, where a cartoony Hitler curses and flails his arms. One group of troops came from an SFesque flying troop transport, the sort of thing one might have found on the cover of Amazing Stories.

A moment later I am water-skiing, though, strictly speaking, a plane tows me on a windsurfer. The pilot is a colleague I rarely see much less talk to, and I don't know that I would trust him to pull me along in this manner. I'm on the bay near some variation of our old family cottage, though some strange, vast hatchery project marks the shore.

7

I'm a teen again. Somewhere I see this strange quasi-Gothic girl. A young friend of mine, not far removed from her own teen years, says she'll introduce me to her.

I decline.