She is very young, tall, willowy, and she likes me. She is laying over me now, kissing me, her knees drawn up beside us.

Now she is driving, and I'm following in another vehicle. She does not seem happy. No, surely she is depressed. There is no joy in her. She leads me into a tunnel and then she whips a U and goes into the tunnel again, this time against traffic.

I see one, two vehicles, bubble up out of the tunnel like shocked fish. One floats on its back, the other on its side. She has done this, and when I have followed her down, I see she is prepared to make it right. She will go back into the tunnel for the third time, this time on foot. There are items she is taking for her lifesaver mission.

Now we're at her house. I'm sitting in a kitchen breakfast alcove. Another enters.

Dick Cheney.

He is very sad, crying even. He sits and mourns. I seem to remember he has shot somebody else. I'm a guest here, so must be polite to any unsavory character the family may invite, although I much distrust their taste.

I say, "It will be the same on the other side of the valley." This is supposed to be philosophically apt and encouraging, but it can mean not that the trouble will be over but that it is episodic. Anyway, it isn't working; Dick still has his head down.

A cow approaches the back of his chair. A cow the size of a large dog. And, in fact, the cow hikes a leg against the back of Dick's chair.

He becomes aware of the moisture, makes efforts to wipe off the back of his chair. I do not help. To me, it seems appropriate somehow, as if someone jumping off a roof should expect to meet the ground hard. I am fascinated by the process however.

Dichotomy Diagram

Dreams are like the seaweed around your ankles when you wade ashore after swimming out beyond the second wave.

I wake in the night. The premise I am working under is, there are too many categories. To begin, you only need two. I am told this and I say, oh, sure, here goes another newage nostrum.

But then I find, it actually works. It seems so very general, but when I break it down, it isn't, really it isn't.

Everything you do is either to enhance your own pride, or that of someone else. Sometimes you inadvertently do both, as, you write something, perhaps a dopey dream, and it pleases you there on the screen, and someone reads it and thinks, what a dopey dream; I could do better than that. So in this case, everyone is satisfied.

I try and dismiss the notion of separating into two parts, but I cannot. After all, that's how computers work, and also Socrates...when he does.

I went back to sleep.

Wakeful reflection: seconds.
Other dreams: lost at sea

I am a child who has just been fleeced of his patrimony by a judge, who is striding honorably beside me, a detectable smirk on his countenance. We are in a long corridor from the courtroom to the great hall. He thinks I don't know I've been robbed and he's the culprit. I'm just a kid. I am crying into a rag, which hangs before me down almost to my feet. Hidden within its folds is a mace, a chain weapon of the Classic Roman era.

I swing it up and slash the face of the judge.

I gain some authority. I now am able to declare something and have it stick, because I slapped the judge with the mace.

There is a place I call Marrakech, but it may not correspond to the actual geographical Morocco. This one is on the northwest corner of the continent and it splatters into islands, and it is a major trade center.

The traders come from everywhere, and they must scatter like flies when the Arabs issue into the region. They do not want traders to remain more than a few days. They are afraid of losing the section to marauding infidels. The traders flutter away in their windriven dinghys and settle back when the soldiers leave. (It's like an image from Women in Love, the casting of the stone into the puddle where the bright orange moon lies, which quickly scatters, then ebbs back together.)

I can say, the traders may stay. I like infidels; they're my favorite folk, they're better drinking companions and they have a sense of humor. The Muslims and the Catholics accuse one another of belonging to a mistaken sect designed on fallacy, and I'm a good mediator because I think they're both right. And the traders stay. No more do the soldiers come. The infidels build permanent dome structures, and infrequently do they make trading voyages now to other parts.

I can say, so I said. It's much better now, the traders in their strange little round cottages, the moon intact in its puddle.

There is a police wagon of some sort chasing the creature about the grounds. I'm standing with one of the orderlies, and the place is like a huge pennetentiary, but very loosely goverened. The critter is running about; it's like a primate but becomes human as I watch.

I have no particular interest - until the orderly beside me starts firing a high-powered rifle at the creature. I move up after the third shot, call something out to the perp, then pick up the little one and go with him. I'm hurrying but not running, and the critter is now a toddler in my arms. He is defective in some way, I am to understand, and that is how they will rid themselves of him.

I go indoors, which is an expansive plant of untold rooms. It is well lit, and obscure settings like cloth-colored pools litter the rooms.

I wait for someone to challenge me, to realize I am not supposed to be carrying one of their charges. Someone speaks, and I reply, and this one thinks it the funniest remark ever. I go on.

Now I can't find the toddler. I call to him. He is under one of the canvas coverings. I hear his reply. He is in no major distress.

Niki J will not be happy I am bringing home a new little creature, but I don't know what else I can do. I think of my shoes. Where are they? Where is my bike? I must leave this place, with the child, even if I lose all I have brought with me.