Two Dreams--

Same night:
In a large gymnasium. There are other folk around for some event or other. As people talk below of the persecution of people in Middle Eastern countries, I find myself way high up, tightrope-style on a metal electrical conduit. I am close enough to the cement slab ceiling that I am steadying myself on another conduit that runs along the ceiling, pinching it between my thumb and the side of my forefinger. People talking intently far below me. I manage to get to the wall and, with the same pinchlike hold, slide down a conduit to the gym floor. I keep mentally reminding myself that I'm traveling soon and need to make arrangements. When am I going? Around the 15th? Have I put off making arrangements for too long? Not quite, but I need to make arrangements soon, right after this engagement, which people are slowly gathering for, whatever it is. The whole gym is brilliantly lit rosy orange-pink from the high-pressure sodium bulbs along the ceiling.

---

It's warm and I'm in bed. I wake up perhaps an hour or so before sunrise, perhaps more. I roll over and look out my two bedroom windows--which have been open--to the neighboring house. The neighbor, who has been gone for a while (or have I been hearing her in my sleep and therefore has she just left?) has left some lights on: through her window I see mundanely-framed objects; a lightswitch, half an arched doorway to the hall, half a pictureframe. Something motivates me to go outside and inspect--is there someone out there that shouldn't be? I'm still thinking about the need to make travel arrangements. I walk along the north side of the house. The neighbor's house looks recently-vacated--the light inside still on, the silence seeming somehow fresh, somehow recently-instated. The neighbor's car (an Escort, European-style, with extra-large headlights) sits in the parking lot behind the house. In fact, the parking lot extends all the way to Euclid street for several lots where houses used to be. How long have the houses been gone now? The lot all well-lit by high-pressure sodium vapor security lights. I hear barking behind me. Rounding the corner of the house by the front porch is Samson, our dog back in the '80s. He thinks I'm an intruder. I call him Winton (the neighbor's dog's name, whose house I just discovered no longer exists). I correct myself and call him by his right name but he's already recognized my voice. Before the dog's bark, before I turned around, I could see the stars above, all clearly visible in spite of the lighting, in that way that a pre-dawn winter sky is bright and icily clear. Leo had wheeled around and was about to head under the horizon to the northwest. And the song playing as soundtrack to both dreams? An ever-repeating opening half of "Deja-Vu" by Dionne Warwick.