The dream setting is a rarefied environment. It’s as if there is just a little bit more spaciousness between all the atoms, so that the fabric of reality allows more light to pass through. Everything moves with greater ease and fluidity. A well-lubricated universe. This is true of thoughts and feelings also. At times this is alarming to me, as if I am losing proximity, at every scale. And maybe I am. But it is also thrilling. Exhilarating. And either way–whether I am fearful or infused–it is the situation and I must get used to it.

At times in the dream I am joined by a singular companion, whom I never see directly. At other times, I join in small group convergences; sometimes familiar faces. But all characters too have been affected by this spaciousness. Even personalities are not so tightly bound.

At times I feel I am steering my passage through these spare scenes and events. On other occasions, I am completely swept along with no element of control. There is also sometimes a Dadaist feeling–a few bold strokes of figures-against-open-field comprise this new reality.

In one sequence, I am aware of my long-standing role as professor at an academy. I feel a certain eerie regard directed toward me, bestowing upon me a particular venerability that seems like hocus pocus to me. I am skeptical of the whole arrangement. I have an office, which I visit. There are few objects there–the space has been mostly cleared out. What pieces remain seem to float about.

I am aware that I do not know what day of the week it is, not even a clue. I’m also aware that I still have a few classes that I teach. However, for some of these classes, I feel I have probably never shown up, never taken roll even once, and have no idea of who the students might be. I am disturbed that none of them has reminded me to show up. And I figure that I am in trouble with the Authorities therefore. Not only do I not know the day of the week, I don’t know the month or the season. Have I been remiss for a short while, or is the school year nearly done? All these structures seem to have dissipated with the new spaciousness. The office is kind of a postage-stamp museum to me.

In the office is a very peculiar bicycle made of cast iron, yet its structure is refined, beautifully designed–as if by Seurat. The structure could not work at all in the old reality–only in this spacious one. I take it out and am on it. In fact, I can achieve dazzling velocities without too much effort. Steering is done by means of holding one prong with an iron bulb on the tip. I never really see wheels. I find myself navigating on streets, around congested city blocks, entering freeways, in heavy traffic. It occurs to me that I might not be so visible, but this concern is swept away in my larger sense of navigability and even ease.

I arrive at a restaurant, kind of shabby–a buffet. A small, random group of acquaintances are gathered. It seems they are all living by some kind of schedule. They are wrapped up in events, complications, pressures. All these engagements are exciting, but for me they seem to be subsets of the larger spaciousness. I realize that the buffet is not only food, not mainly food, but rather experiences too, portals, opportunities.

Time travel to Tennessee. I am in my father’s workshop. I know he has died many years ago, yet I feel his presence permeating the whole scene, all the objects. People come looking for him, to observe his memory. I am aware of some unfinished work that I can take care of. This too is possible with the new spaciousness. I want to deal with this effectively, but there is no more rush since time also has been loosened up.

Back on my bicycle, back to the buffet, a friend hands me a baby–about twenty pounds, even with the new spaciousness. I take the baby for a spin on my bicycle. I’m not sure how I can do this. It’s a considerable change of balance, vectors. But I was already navigating with only one hand. I give the baby a good look at the horizon. I realize I’m not sure actually how to get back to where we started. The situation is very convoluted, but I don’t get distraught. There’s a good bit of traffic, a very demanding route, physically vigorous–but I hang on to the baby who is pragmatic and content to watch. We make it back and I hand the baby over.

And I feel a completeness to this whole new world. There are urges to panic, but they don’t rise up too far. I have a new realization of how little is up to me–with an exactly parallel realization of what I have to do. The overall feeling of things is Dadaist. What character I have is edged differently, more permeable, effusive. Somehow, I trust the surfaces where I find myself.