Only a few details to report. Cats gotta eat, and I can't spend all day at this. Here's the raw data:

I dreamed that I was out with a group of friends, and the intention was to attend a dinner theater somewhere in the foothills, possibly Grass Valley or Nevada City, although no real landmarks stood out. We were on foot, so it didn't seem likely that we were going to make it to the theater on time, but we were just enjoying the night out together. 

Somewhere along the way, I'd collected some pieces of promotional material printed on adhesive backed vinyl, similar to bumper stickers. I was looking through the letters and numbers of the glossy adverts with the idea of making a ransom note type collage, spelling out something of my own choosing. I planned to cut out the letters Mi:7 and surreptitiously slap them on the back of my cousin Tim's T-shirt, in the way that one places a "kick me" sign on the back of a person being pranked. 

I spent quite a bit of time holding onto these letters and trying to keep them hidden from Cousin Tim, and as the evening wore on, I never seemed to find the right opportunity to pull my trick. I kept dropping the stickers and having to rearrange them, like cards in a hand of gin. Such an easy prank, so difficult to achieve. After a long night of walking and getting lectured by Johanna Scott, an ex-cult member, I finally abandoned the idea altogether.

On our way back from the theater venue where, indeed, we did not get in--too late, too many people in our party--we were walking along the avenues next to a college. My Brother Mike was walking with Emery a few feet ahead of me, and I could hear them making awkward introductions. Mike was not really Mike, but a composite of my brother and two other people, Mark Ginter, a mental patient at Esplanade Manor in the 90s and Mark Goldsmith, a friend from Play Mountain Place, my childhood alternative school.*

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Emery," said Mike/double Mark in a shy, unassuming voice. He then leaned in and kissed her once on the cheek and once on the lips.

"You're going to love him," I said, unable to suppress the sarcastic glee in my voice. I looked forward to seeing her response to my brother's inappropriate greeting.

"Well, um...OK, then," she said. "Pleased to meet you, as well." 

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more of a reaction. It seemed their individual nerdiness and awkwardness had cancelled each other out, and the two of them began talking as if they were old friends. After a while they parted ways, with Mike heading off in one direction, and Emery and I continuing along the avenue. 

We were walking by some cement planters containing water ivy. They were about curb height, and they separated the sidewalks from the street in place of the grass strips that one usually sees in a residential neighborhood. As we walked, Emery put her foot into one of these hydroponic beds, and the dirty water stained her stocking up to her knee.

"That's not pretty," she said, looking first at her one soiled sock and then at the other, still pristine and white and new.

Without losing a beat, she decided to lie down in the planter, fully immersing herself in the mucky liquid. When she emerged, her clothing and skin were a uniform grey. She looked like she'd been mummified, embalmed in a silty coating of industrial wastewater. 

I felt bad for her, having ruined her clothes like that, so I decided wade in and sit down next to her in solidarity. I didn't submerge my head in the muck, however. I wasn't going to risk getting all that filthy water in my ears, and I just wasn't that committed to the look.

*Biographical factoid: Mark Goldsmith's mother was born with a birth defect called ectrodactyly, also known as cleft hand, or lobster hand, which gave her only two opposable digits on each hand, a thumb and one forefinger. As a child, I was haunted by the image of these pincer-like hands. 

In googling this condition, I was inundated with pictures of deformities of all kinds, and what started as a curious recollection has left me feeling sad and guilty. There are so many things in this world that I guess I'd just rather not know about, but having seen them, I can't turn away. A kind of morbid fascination compels me to look even though doing so leaves me somewhat tarnished.

Birth defects and rare diseases have always terrified me. My mom had a medical book with pictures of people suffering from all kinds of horrible conditions: elephantiasis, leprosy, African sleeping sickness. My little brain stored up these traumatic images so that I was afraid to go to sleep for fear that I'd wake up looking like the little child on the cover of Concert for Bangladesh.