I dream I am trapped in a life. It's all pressure and commitment. So I spontaneously take a plane to a random destination. I fly to Virgio or something like that. It's supposed to be Louisiana or Virginia. It's someplace new.

Only I recognize a place from a dream. It's an embedded dream where I'm dreaming that I've dreamt something before only it's probably still the first time I've dreamt it. I love when I do that. Otherwise, my dreams are horribly straightforward. I recognize this place from a dream. It's a church, tall and gothic and stranded on an oasis between two freeways. And I know that I've found the place even though I didn't know I was looking.

But the vision of the church is only a sign, a sign that I'm close to where I wanted to be without knowing it.

In the street I spy two of my best friends, R. and C. R. and C. were sweethearts in University and as it turns out – in real life – they broke up and R has married somebody else. But in my dream it was R. and C. and they were still a couple as I have always felt it should have been. It's no surprise they are stuck as sweethearts in my brain. I have always been slightly uncomfortable around R's new wife. My brain has paralyzed R. and C. together. I see them in the streets in this familiar but foreign place. And first I think not to say hello because clearly they are enjoying their time together. Is it a parade? But they see me and I don't shrink away and they invite me to their hotel.

Their room is grand. Very large. Like the entire floor of a hotel. And it's got everything including a book store even though there are no customers. And they invite me to stay but I don't want to be a burden. I think I want to take a nap but it occurs to me that I am not in this place for long. Is it odd to dream that you want to sleep? I don't want to waste this quick holiday so I take my camera, say goodbye to my friends and set out. They want to know where I'm going but I'm not sure. My destination is someplace by the river and I feel like it's further in (South?) and to the right and close to the water but I only feel this by instinct. Still I'm assured that I will find the place and before the sun sets and before I run out of time.

Something with a TV and commercials. All the commercials are odd and foreign. It disconcerts me and makes me miss home even though I am feeling liberated. Does the drone bee, by instinct, miss his honeycomb when he is out?

I head further in and turn right. I rented a motorcycle from the hotel. It's a suburban village. Tacky and delicious and recognizable. I see houses I remember from dreams just as they should be and just where they should be and take photographs. I'm fulfilling a quest by returning to this place I had only been to in dreams. Some things are not quite right but it's very close. Time has corroded and changed things but only slightly – like your own house with a different paint job or a different couch. There's a river to cross. The water runs very close and furious under the bridge. I take more pictures. It gets dark but I am unafraid. There's a construction over the bridge as well. A close tunnel of stone. Suspended from the ceiling are five women, a cross of whore and harpy. Magical prostitutes, but like characters you encounter journeying through a fable, they are very helpful and I am unafraid. They are congenial and send me on my way. A smaller village with everything where it should be only perhaps where there should have been three houses there were four.

A McDonald's. Perhaps the next day. It's no longer dark. Along a city street. Perfectly normal and ordinary only I know somebody there.

I pick up a newspaper from this foreign land. It feels like proof or evidence, a souvenir, perhaps, to take with me when I leave this strange and happy fable.

There are cables in the back. Like AV cables or electrical wires. Far more than there should be. The person I know – he is no one I can identify in real life – has built some kind of bomb. Only the whole thing seems to have no malice and I don't feel like anybody is going to die or that there is any imminent danger. I watch with mostly disinterest as he cuts some cables and reattaches more. I think this bomb was like the plane that brought me here. The bomb will return me.

There's no explosion, no death. But it feels like the end here. Perhaps the bomb, after all, returns me.

SS