Last night I dreamt that Jimmy and I lived on the top flat of a Victorian apartment house constructed of glass and skinny steel beams. An immense tree grew in the heart of this house, its emerald canopy weighty with squirrels which often descended, hunting for nuts.

At a party we hosted, a pack of little serpentine dogs appeared. Their fur was patterned like caterpillar skin and they snaked around the heels of a young man I hadn�t seen in months.

M was very tan, as if he had caravanned through desert, and he wore a natty white suit. I thought, Snake doctor. He looked like what snake doctors must have appeared, exotic and flamboyant, to the citizens of backwater towns who, work-gnarled, coal-dusted, and naive, marveled over the medicinal mysteries contained within one suitcase.

The young man told my guests that he loved me madly, �since 1999�, but I, of course, did not believe him; he was a young man I had known well and once loved, when I was very young and naive to my sensuality.

. . .

When I woke, I thought about my friend who had disappointed me and I thought about what I would write when I finally sat down in front of the computer this morning. I thought about many disappointments, the most important being the disappointment in myself for not writing more often about things that matter. I also finished Eric Schlosser�s Fast Food Nation; snake doctors are piddling next to meatpacking industrialists and chain-restaurant executives. No more writing about disappointments; I have more important ideas/places/people/spells to discover.

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