I am trying to bring order among scattered objects.

I’m in conversation with anonymous others—faculty, students, friends—as in my teaching era. Speaking to one creative writing student, I say that “I can’t believe last year is over already, much less this year too.”

I am aware that in my stack of personal drawings is an unusual one. I can recall drawing one in particular, perhaps in an earlier phase of the dream. I drew the picture from the top of the head down, as a miraculously, magically, formed profile emerged. Very realistic, this face, full of emotion and sensitivity. And, as I drew it and examined it, I was surprised to see that it is the face of a youth. He’s about ten years old. This is not the image I set out to draw, but a face that presented itself to me all in burnt sienna.* And I am strangely aware that the face is my own, not as perceived but as most profoundly proprioceived, in this moment, in the moment of drawing, even more accurately than when I was ten years old.

I am aware that something strange has happened and is happening with this image. In the dream I am eager to leaf through the stack of work to show this piece in particular to a colleague at year’s end.

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*Burnt sienna is a warm reddish-brown pigment derived from heating clay….Among the chief geological properties of the Southern Appalachians where I was born is the “red clay.” My playmates and I universally experienced heavy clumps of “red clay” stuck on our shoes.