I Dream of Hancock, Maryland

I dreamed I was in Hancock, Maryland, which is a pretty little town and a plain little town, a charming place and a possibly depressing place, it’s difficult for me to say which way it might fall. It follows the C & O Canal and Potomac River on one side and on the other the Interstate seals it in. It’s a long narrow succession of one thing after another, the alternating sights contribute to a binary, sometimes bi-polar impression. I dreamed the main street and its sidewalks were white — by which I mean, whiteness, the quality of being completely blank. Like a metaphysical blank canvas not yet filled in with any sort of reality. That’s the street where we live.

Thirsty and Dreaming

I woke up thirsty and dreaming. The multiple dimensions I’d been visiting appeared to me as a set of interlocking mirrors of different sizes, and they were just about to collapse and shatter. I was a perverted guy who lived on the ground floor of an apartment building in a Latin American city, I was the woman who lived above him, and I was the journalist interviewing them both and moving back and forth. I carried a pillow with me from the attic storeroom of the place to the balcony and I did this several times, always encountering my boss and wondering vaguely, without concern, whether he would think I was doing this for the purpose of napping, when I wasn’t. The mirrors reminded me that I’d been and done so much more than I could ever remember. They slanted in toward each other to form the narrow alley where I walked; their texture turned pebble-grained though still clear, then they began melting like mercury. By now I was almost asleep again and realized I would remain thirsty. I would sleep on thirst because it gave me something to go on.