"Dreams have nothing to do with your waking life. We are assured of that. In fact, all dreams are only the sleeping Doberman within unleashed to run at night. He'll be back on the porch come morning." - Woesong
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A series of bungalos, a hospital laid out like a Vietnamese village. I am asking at a reference desk. I step to a plastic window, and I must move close to it, because the staff comprises two faces down below in a spa or a pool, maybe four feet from the level of the window.

The faces are washed clean of all emotion, like automotons in fifties scifi movies, except there is no melodrama. Their eyes are impercecptible, like obvious plastic. It isn't that they're depressed, it's just that they have no emotion.

One passes across the narrow waiting room. She has no clothing, and all identifying markers are airbrushed; she's like a kid's doll, anatomically incorrect.

Yes, I am told, he's here. He's in Cardiac. That's number four.

I don't believe it. But I have to go see. I cannot just ignore the possibility Reloj is in number four. She takes me outside, and we step aboard a moving vehicle of some sort, like another bungalo but on tracks. She points when we have moved to a different vantage, says, you go left...no, you go right from there.

I know this isn't so, I say, but I'm maybe careful not to think what I do know. I proceed into a mystifying labyrinth of small cottages placed in no order I can discern. I begin to understand it makes really no difference if I go left or right.

--

Inside a museum or craft shop, we look at carvings of light wood, like balsa, in all sizes. Niki J and Casey hand a statuette to Scoob, who takes it in his mouth to the foyer in front. Niki J tried to retrieve the carving, and Scoob takes off.

"He's outside!" I say.

"No, he can't go out..."

But he has found a way, with the door closed. He just slips into the side lot and is gone. I hurry after.

It's like an extended hobo jungle out there, with visibility limited to a few feet off the immediate trail, or maybe a carny camp, with small tents and fires going and someone comes out to mark my passing. I'm calling to Scoob. I'm worried he'll be somewhere in harm's way. I seek in unfamiliar terrain.

I don't find him when I awaken. And then on our walk this morning, he sidles away from me up the ridge trail all the way to the flats by the Conrad's watertank, and into the steep woods behind it. I approach him, calling, and he looks at me, then bounds away. He is at the back door soon after I am, almost apologetic. I must being his schooling anew.

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9:38 AM 5/8/2003, detailing the last two nights' dreams

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Dreamatis Personae

Niki J - Lovely spouse
Casey - Loving son
Scoobie - Loving Rottweiller/Pit Bull
Conrads - Neighbors