I am not sure of the chronology of the following, although I think the bus was first and the book was last.

I was sitting on the outside half of a seat on the bus when a young man got on. He began to tout his cause (unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was, but it was something unusual and that interested me). I moved over to let him sit down and encouraged him to talk about this cause with others since he seemed somewhat shy. He became engrossed in a conversation with the young men across the way. Then I heard him say that his big weapon in his campaign was “PLASTIC!” He opened his briefcase to reveal plastic envelopes. This upset me as an environmental hazard, so I wouldn’t listen to him any more.

I went back to my apartment, which had a long kitchen, and wanted to peak out the window but it was high and I was afraid of knocking the curtains off and not being able to get them back on the rod. Something about the bathroom was out of order, so I found myself at a restaurant that was in a nearby apartment. Two stools had a glass case in between. The fixtures in the bathroom looked like gadgets, but the room itself was not very clean. I went back to the glass case to see if the person on the other side could hear me — was it really meant for two people together? She could. It appeared the case kept their ice cream cold while they ate, but I wondered why the people wouldn’t be cold as well.

Somebody was designing something for the restaurant, and this reminded me of how I am feeling. I wouldn’t say anything about it. In a conversation held during a trip I suddenly was in the middle of, I told a key person how I really felt about my last evaluation and the entire process. She kept talking about, “Do you want this? Do you want that?” And here I was, talking about what I want and not being heard again.

I found that I was on a barge on a river or lake along with the young man with the plastic. I was retrieving something bad for the water in lumps, something like coal. He said I couldn’t do it because it was too much, and each was too massive. But the lumps got progressively smaller until it was clear I’d gotten them all.

I was in the kitchen and trying unsuccessfully to reach the window again, I realised the book in my hand was called something that really only one person would have used, and as I read it I recognised it as a book he was writing. I thought about calling him to tell him he’d been stolen from but for some reason found this to be absurd and too difficult to do.

I woke up feeling thwarted all around.

I was walking down a dark, narrow hallway and saw, to the side, a tableau of a strangely dressed man and woman that seemed disturbing, like something you’d see in a funhouse. The woman was holding a doll’s or doll-sized head that looked oddly like her own on a pike, and the scene seemed to represent some historical event or people. I continued and encountered a woman with curly dark hair. I was about to utter some pleasantry when I realised she looked very much like the woman (and doll’s head) in the tableau. I became terrified as though something of dreadful significance was happening.

I woke up and, even though the room was warm, I felt as cold as dry ice.