Late last night the topic wandered from flannel sheets, cozy clothing, and borscht to dreams, peculiar ones in particular. Some people dream vivid and frequently, others are visited by scattered, rare, and vague stories. Three of us decided that going to sleep we would attempt to have unusual dreams in parallel, and remember to record them in the morning, to see what turned up from our efforts. The dream that was imprinted on my waking mind was not very strange, just loose and wandering. Laying there in bed trying to remember what I had needed to do in the morning, until I realized that the thing I was supposed to do was record my dream. So, blurry eyed scribbling sloppy handwriting, tracing the stories which seemed to unfold and grow much more complex as I examined them. Trying to fit it all on one side of the paper so I would not have to wait for it to dry before flipping it over (to avoid getting ink all over the sheets) and hoping that nothing vanished before I locked it down in words.

...

I was in a car driving towards home with a couple other people, the temperature must have dropped rain turned to ice and snow covering the landscape. The road was slick and the car kept sliding around, drifting into the other lane and oncoming traffic. Drifting forwards over the road through the muddy white leaving the flat wide path indentations of tire tracks, occasionally cresting hills with a creeping slow speed for fear of the unknown on the other side. Avoiding near collisions with an uncanny luck, drifting onto the shoulder and side roads still nearly colliding with other vehicles, we slowed to a stop and got out to walk for a while.

There was a older man walking with us along the shoreline, trees were overhead and it was temperate the snow having faded away. He kept trying to get gophers to come out of their holes, they would occasionally poke out and twine around between his feet before ducking back underground, they were also biting his toes and ankles though which made him frustrated. Finally he found a friendly one (or at least he claimed it was friendly) and proceeded to grab it by its large protruding teeth (sharp elongated instead of buck teeth for some reason) and held it aloft examining it for a while.

Things shifted and we found ourselves walking in a park, I was playing with my friends clumsy big dog named Carmen, she was jumping and bounding around me in that goofy way she has, knocking things over occasionally. I was trying to see what I could get her to topple and where she might follow me, so eventually I hopped up on this little island surrounded by a small mote of fishpond size. Carmen dove in and started swimming in circles around me, and we watched her incredulously.

I found myself in a building that was some blend of hostel, convent, and school in some unnamed ancient hispanic town south of the equator. There were all kinds of girls wandering through the streets and running through the building in elaborate dresses and costumes, waiting for and going around arms interlocked with boys. I sat down next to a girl who was sitting in a windowsill looking out at the street people milling around. She looked forlorn, heartbroken, and after talking for a while she accused me of being unsympathetic and a poor listener. I told her that it is hard to listen to her troubles and help her if she would not tell them to me at all, we ended up kissing a short while for some reason.

I leave the building to walk around town and try to understand it some, I meet up with a flambouyant graffiti writer who proceeds to show me around. He is in the stage of trying to take his graffiti into the art circles and gain credebility, give meaning and explanation to the things he has been doing out of love. Looking through his blackbook while he watches me, I try to be polite and examine each sketch carefully even though it is all of such poor quality and effort that I begin to grow irritated.

(maps begin floating through my mind of south and north american, drifting over each other half transparent)

In my kitchen playing with a cat, it jumps up onto my lap and then back to the floor, over and over again. It runs into the bathroom and jumps into the bathtub where my roommate chris is sitting fully clothed (in shorts as usual) facing backwards. He starts to add more water to the bath as the cat plays about, and suddenly he dunks the cat under, it is suppoing wet as it comes back up to the surface and appears not to mind at all.