Dream: Around the bend
In a recurring dream scene, I returned to college to find that the campus and the neighborhood were utterly unfamiliar. The dormitories had become Borgian labyrinths, modern and strange, yet dark and cluttered. Outdoors I expected to find the usual bland streets and city lights, but, as I usually find, there was a magnificent oceanscape and natural area, just a few blocks away. As always, I wondered why I hadn't spent time there back then, although I hadn't known it existed and wasn't sure it actually had. I mourned the lost opportunity.Some friends and I went to a restaurant in a crowded block of storefronts that looked more like San Francisco than Hyde Par

Dream: iPhone addiction
While I was visiting family, they offered to take me for a ride in the country. V. took the wheel of the Jeep, which she never does. We drove across the hills in a way that struck me as improbable. At one point the grass turned into a dirt road around a bend, but V. stayed on the corner grass, giving us a bump.Fighter jets flew in formation overhead. A few would have seemed strange, but there were enough to indicate something big was happening here. "In Pennsylvania"? I thought in disbelief.We came to a cliff overlooking an artificially rectangular lake that was an unhealthy green. We could see an enormous helicopter and a smaller

A river runs through it
On October 17, J. and I got a late start to the Morton Arboretum, so after the obligatory visit to the gift shop there wasn't a lot of time left for exploring. We drove to the other side and stopped briefly at Lake Marmo, then continued on until we found a new spot for us, one that instantly fell in with—a bridge over the DuPage River. Rivers, streams, creeks—I love them—their sound, their movement, their travels, their sometimes primordial loveliness. They remind me of a fairy tale I read as a child, where the story mattered less to me than the meadow or stream where it was set. They remind me of my favorit

Hawkeye
This morning at South Shore Drive and 56th Street I heard the autumn crows cawing in fine form. As I turned onto the sidewalk along the park, something flew up in front of me; my impression was of a mourning dove, although I hadn't picked up the characteristic whrrrr! of its takeoff. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that w

Dream: Halloween vampire
A well-dressed man held a group hostage in an elegant dining room at a mansion. They may not have known it, but I could tell he was a vampire. If they didn't comply with his wishes, which were unknown to me, he would perform unspeakably gruesome acts.He pointed to what looked like an ordinary coffee mug and handed a girl a twig, almost like cinnamon bark. She, under his control, dropped the twig, a drug or poison, into the cup, although part of me wondered how he would force the people to drink it. I knew him to be evil, though, and in my mind I saw all of them tortured and dying if they drank what was in the cup.I don't know if I was the girl, or if I was an opposin