the treetops out the windows are turning from green to golden, the black underlying framework standing out bolder and bolder daily. sunrise shines pink against the window-studded brick wall down the way and must be blushing sleepers in their beds and giving rose-hued dreams.
my dreams have been fantastical and vivid, and I lie in bed after waking, drowsing, to recall them and find myself drifting into new scenarios and cul-de-sacs.
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I go out for lunch with the work friends to a pastry place we're trying out for some event– and after we've eaten our slices of quiche and crusty brioche, we rise to go– I'm somehow full of bounces and race for the door and have to pull up in a hard stop as a display wall of hundreds of tiny cubbies filled with pastries looms in my path– I reach out a single index finger to help brace me as I halt, and my momentum transfers and the whole thing wobbles gigantically– I try to steady it with the same finger, but a kind of groundswell has taken the thing and rocks it, and it comes crashing down toward me– mortification ensues in the flakey chaos I have wreaked.
we're driving back to work and rounding a bend in a swank and leafy neighborhood when I see a little black dog with its collar caught on a branch of shrubbery and call out to stop– I leap from the car and run and release the little dog and lift it up in my arms so it can't dash off– the black ringlets of its fur are soft against my fingertips and where they brush my arms. we try the houses one by one to locate the creature's home and in the process meet the inhabitants, and it turns into a fantastic adventure involving characters who seem ordinary at first but whose suburban facades cloak astonishing powers and intrigues that now escape me. I know that rescuing and returning the dog to its rightful owner initiates a string of incidents that involve underground cavern hideouts and complicated layers of good versus evil and non-human flying creatures and hiding in escape chutes like breathing vacuum tubes from spies of the enemy and job offers to join the resistance and an old man god of dubious beneficence who can be summoned to walk through solid rock mountains– in the end, sadly, we must return once more to the routine workday– though years seem to have passed, our hair has grown, and we all seem a good deal older and more interesting if not necessarily wiser.