The economy was very bad, and my father was washing his white pickup truck for sale. I asked how much he wanted — $20,000. I looked into its white bed flecked with rust and wondered at his lack of pragmatism.

We went for a drive in the country and stopped at the foot of a hill, where a man offered to make my sister and me something of our choice. She asked for a vampire. He disappeared. When he returned with it, his behavior had become very strange. Discreetly and without haste he pursued my sister, never quite catching her but always staying right behind her. He commented on her virtue and beauty and seemed delighted by her mounting nervousness.

I asked for a gargoyle, although I’m not sure that that is what I wanted. It was the first thing that occurred to me. When he returned, he did not follow or pursue me, and his comments were of a different nature. I sensed that he was attracted to me for more than looks alone. I and my attributes were desirable to him on some deeper level, and it frightened me that I could read his mind. His variable character repulsed, horrified, and fascinated me, and I was troubled that I understood him so well.

I was making a quick stop at DW’s house on the way to another city (I would figure out later that it was NYC). I didn’t see most of their house, including the living room, dining room, and kitchen, all of which seemed to be off limits. Instead, I was restricted to a bedroom and/or sitting room.

When I tried to use the bathroom, I found that the doorway was so narrow that I couldn’t fit through it. I used the one in the master bedroom once, but had the impression that that was frowned upon. I found another bathroom that was set up almost like a salon, with a woman or two sitting on chairs in a waiting area. I turned to close the door for privacy, but there was none, not even a curtain. This door was also unusually narrow.

In the bed-/sitting room, a green toilet seat flapped up and down erratically and mysteriously.

Every now and then I would open a door and, instead of a bathroom, I would find an ocean scene with a witch from Wicked astride the waves. I didn’t know what to think.

Then there was a game that involved racing herb leaves down the length of the pan. I did well, but discovered only later that the leaves would follow the finger like a magnet. Finally, I accidentally flipped the pan over and panicked about losing leaves. All of them were accounted for.

I wondered how my friends could live in such a strange, chaotic place, but noticed that they still retained their old values from childhood.

I told DW I was going to meet a friend in NYC. When she looked at me inquiringly, I looked at her significantly, which surprised her. I began to imagine this liaison, although even in my imagination it did not happen as I wished.

I remembered that I didn’t yet have a ticket to NYC and wondered at myself for doing so much flying in such a short time. I felt disappointed because I knew I could not pull it off — there must have been a miscommunication somewhere.

And I kept encountering the Wicked witch, atop the waves.

At one point, I was clenching my teeth so tightly that my night guard, already broken in back, disintegrated under the force. I could feel tiny plastic shards between my teeth and wondered if I would need a new guard and how I would pay for it. While all this was vivid and sensory, I understood that it was a dream.

I was in a classroom, and the instructor asked who some group feared the most. The obvious answer would have been a particular racial or ethnic group, but I knew the real answer, which came out involuntarily: “The working man.” I turned around and saw Studs Terkel few seats behind me. Although he showed no reaction, I hoped I had gotten his attention with my insight.

I was in this classroom because I had re-enrolled in college, but I could not recall attending any other classes, and I couldn’t remember what they were. I reluctantly confessed to someone that I had returned to college for another degree that wasn’t even at a graduate level, that I had not been attending classes, and that I had lost track of my progress and status.

I began to worry about the money I had wasted, thinking a few hundred dollars up to as much as a thousand. I didn’t understand anything I had done. I wondered whether trying to continue toward such a useless goal with so many questions unanswered and with no motivation would be a waste of more money and if quitting would mean wasting the money already spent.

I worried that Studs would find out.

I was about to take college entrance exams and was trying to set pens, pencils, etc., into the slots of a holder when I noticed I must have been suspended in mid-air over a hillside at an angle, because everything I set into a slot slid and fell to the grassy ground below. Nervously, I took a Bic Clic apart, and watched in horror as the refill, spring, and bottom half fell. I consoled myself with the idea that I could look for them later (in that vast amount of grass). I was panicking about having nothing left with which to take the test, but that fear was surpassed by a weird emotional attachment to a cheap, replaceable pen.

I felt something strange and overheard that it was only a minor earthquake — nothing to worry about. I became aware that I was in northern California, which seemed wrong. I didn’t want to worry about earthquakes, too. For reassurance, I turned around and looked for KW. I didn’t see anyone.

For the next part of the test, I found myself with no other choice but to lie on a cold, wet, sloping steel surface to have one finger examined carefully. Why? What was the purpose? Why this awkward, nonsensical position?

I told someone that there seemed to be fewer people enrolled in the following year’s class. “It’s the bad economy,” I noted. “It’s keeping kids out of college.” This seemed terribly wrong to me, but I felt no concern for myself.

The sloping steel finger exam still haunted me.

I was trying to be on time for the daily 9 a.m. meeting, but was cutting it too close. Mysteriously, I succumbed to an urge to get a particular book, title unknown, from the library before I left.

I had to climb onto the bookshelves, which seemed gigantic and crowded to me. I crawled over books as though they were boulders on a steep mountain slope. Some were so high or placed so close to an edge that they seemed insurmountable. Time was ticking away, and I was tiring rapidly. I could not haul myself any further over all these book obstacles. It was horrifying to me that I was going to miss the unimportant three-minute meeting, but inside I was afraid that I had deliberately trapped myself forever to get out of all of them.

I woke up early, exhausted and a little panicked.

In reality, I was late for the following day’s meeting.