Sen told me he had a dream about me, shortly after we ran into each other on the street a month or two ago. We were good friends, working together as teachers of music at a North Berkeley conservatory. I thought, Yes, we will be good friends.

...

Lately, my dreams feature the raccoon that sneaks into the kitchen late nights, rattling for cat food. In return, he leaves behind pawprints sooty with the detritus any creature might collect while living within the walls of an old great house.

However, this morning, my slumber was haunted not by furry bandits but by the spectre of a face, mine and yet not-mine, so young and shapeless that it scared me away, wondering if I just had a nightmare, my first in months.

...

Who was that girl? Had she been really me? I'm 24. 18 seems so long ago, thankfully ancient, almost forgotten.

...

In former years, I would take lotsa photographs and write in lotsa journals, furiously recording this world that seemed so new, so strange, so ephemeral to me. Now I don't write so much on paper or feel the need to stock up on so much film anymore. Perhaps that betrays how comfortable I am with this body of mine, so much more at ease than when I was 18-22, needy to hold it in place with its shadow drawing long across paper, glossy or matte. Then, I would ballpoint simple maps; at the center was my place of residence and radiating away from that center were the locations of loved ones and the places I frequented. What happened to those maps and the novice cartographer that had furrowed her brow over the exact spelling of certain place-names?

Now there are too many places, more places than I can record. All of them tenuous too. Place--as I get older--seems so at the mercy of desire--mine and others. Duh, right?!?

...

And what disquiet is this, this disquiet so like other unwieldy heart-disturbances which have compelled you to shapeshift, often unrecognizably, what has you dreaming of a face you haven't seen in years?

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