I am the president of Namibia

The country is in very bad shape. People are starving. I sit down in a conference room located in a hotel and casino complex. My friend is sitting across from me, and she seems angry. She says she is hungry. She says her money is worthless. Others at the table listen to her closely and offer suggestions, but I am feeling dizzy. Bill Clinton arrives. He says he is a special envoy from the United States, sent to help Namibians create wealth. He starts talking but I interrupt him. I say that I am the first white president of Namibia, and it is only a matter of time before I am deposed by a coup. I suggest that we start printing even more money. I say, "sometimes in order to get rid of a hangover you just need to keep drinking." Clinton thinks this is a good idea. The problem, I continue, is that our currency was overvalued. Now it is being undervalued but we need to print more money in order to stimulate investment. Then once the economy picks up again, we will raise interest rates and return to a stricter fiscal policy. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but everyone at the table except for my friend seems to think I am a genius.

I get up to go to the bathroom. On my way there I am met by Joe Biden and his wife. He tells me that that he heard Namibia had a white president and he had to see for himself. He then invites me to his private room to watch a satellite feed of a boxing match. I agree to join him. I walk back to the conference room and tell the others that I must be departing, as I have important state business to attend to. They wish me well, except for my friend, who is silent.

I go to find Biden's room but get lost. I stumble outside and find myself in the middle of a four-lane highway, with cars zipping past me in every direction. I dodge the cars to cross the street. Completely lost, I find a service station and go inside. There I am grabbed by three men who tell me that I must now be a contestant in a special game. I stand by a podium and look at a shelf that holds three dishes filled with food. One man tells me that I must pick a dish. Two out of the three dishes are poisoned, he says. I win the game if I pick the dish that has not been poisoned.

From the three dishes I choose a hamburger and fries. I start eating. The man comes over and tells me that I have chosen well, as that was the dish they were not going to poison. But then he explains that they decided to poison that one too, so that all three were poisoned. So, he explains, I have won the game but I am still going to die of food poisoning. I start throwing up and can barely stand. He says he is going to go get my prize but instead I stumble outside the service station, my clothes covered in vomit. I continue to throw up. I want to find Joe Biden's room but I am having trouble standing, and I can barely see the gravel of the pavement at my feet.

I am playing a video game

I am sitting in the basement of my childhood home, playing a baseball video game. I am trying to set up the game so I can play home run derby between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees at Camden Yards. The game is very sophisticated, however, and I can't figure out how to make it do what I want. I start becoming very frustrated. My father, who is watching me play the game, says I should just stop trying, because I am making a fool of myself. He tells me that the newspapers have arrived at the end of the driveway, and I have to go deliver them.

I walk outside. There are no newspapers at the end of the driveway. I walk down the driveway towards the side yard to see if perhaps the papers have been left there. There are no papers there, but looking down at my feet I see that the grass has turned a gray, ashen color. Reaching down to touch one of the blades, I see that the entire ground is covered with this same thin film of gray dust. I look around me. The house is gray, the sky is gray, I am gray. Everything is now gray.

I walk back towards the end of the driveway and see that someone has left a box there. I open it. Inside are perhaps a dozen thinly sliced breaded pieces of chicken, exactly like what you would find in the frozen section of the supermarket. I decide to deliver these instead of newspapers. Taking the box in hand, I start walking around the neighborhood. Some of the houses have separate boxes, shaped like newspaper boxes, attached to their mailboxes that are labeled "chicken." I place a slice of chicken in each box. When I reach the cul-de-sac at the end of my street, I see that there are two houses without boxes. I walk down the driveway of the first house. The front door is open, so I walk in. The house is very well furnished. Standing in the foyer I can hear the sounds of someone cooking a meal in the kitchen, and jazz music playing from the stereo. I want to go inside but realize I will not be welcome here. I quietly place a slice of chicken by the bannister and leave. Then I walk to the second house. Again the front door is open. Stepping into the foyer, I can hear the voice of Tony Soprano amidst the clanking of silverware. Soprano is yelling at one of his kids while eating his dinner. I am afraid to see him so I leave the piece of chicken on the floor, by the welcome mat.

I walk back outside. The sky is still gray, but everything is getting darker. I am now out of chicken. As I walk back towards my house, I realize that my father will make me collect money for the things I have delivered. The thought of this makes me extremely anxious.

I am Sitting on Top of a Hill

I am holding my baby but he is very sick. When I look down at him he is missing his head. A friend of mine is sitting with me on top of the hill and she says that maybe the baby will still be alright. We should check and see if he can walk up and down the hill. I let him go and he starts tumbling towards the bottom of the hill. I chase after him and pick him up again. We try again, but again the baby is unable to walk up or down the hill. A man comes by and says I must leave the baby with him. He says it as if I have no choice, so I give him the baby.

I start walking. Eventually I reach a camp with a baseball field surrounded by a few buildings. I go inside one of the buildings and meet perhaps 10 or 15 people from my high school graduating class. They are all living together in a commune of some kind. They seem to be getting along well with one another but they apparently don't appreciate my presence. There is a woman there who I had a crush on during high school; I try to talk to her but she ignores me. Eventually somebody comes by and says I should go outside and play baseball. They say that for today I can be Mickey Mantle. I grab a bat and walk up to the plate. The pitcher is left-handed and I also bat left-handed even though Mantle was a switch-hitter. The first pitch comes in; it is very low. The umpire, a fat, balding man, mumbles something and makes a lazy gesture with his hand. I ask him if it was a ball or a strike. He says strike. I say that's ridiculous; that pitch was near my ankles. He tells me to go to hell.

Another pitch comes in, also very low. Again the umpire says it is a strike. I feel myself getting angrier. The third pitch comes in, even lower than the first two. It bounces on the plate. The umpire announces strike three. I immediately throw my bat down and toss my helmet across the field. The umpire ejects me from the game. I demand to know why he called those pitches strikes. "Because you are a criminal," he says. When he says that I grab a bat and smash him over the head. He falls to the ground, groaning. I drag him away from the home plate area and dump his body in a ditch. When he lands in the ditch his neck breaks and he is dead.

I walk back to the compound where my high school classmates are staying. They all ignore me. Finally the woman I had a crush on in high school tells me I have to leave. "You are a murderer," she says. I grab a bag and walk out. The earth and sky are both a uniform gray, except for the setting sun which appears like a tiny red dot, smaller than the moon, on the distant horizon.

I am getting ready for my calculus exam

I am back in high school, senior year, just before graduation. My calculus teacher is preparing us for our last exam of the year. We are feeling down; nobody among us really likes calculus. My teacher though is in a jovial mood; she tells us that only one thing in life ever made her love doing calculus: baseball! I expect that she will try to use baseball statistics to make the subject more entertaining, but instead she says that a good friend of hers, a professional baseball player, has come into town to talk to us about calculus.

Ryan Sweeney of the Oakland Athletics walks through the door, dressed in his Oakland A's baseball uniform. He begins shouting to us like an enthusiastic baseball coach, telling us how great calculus is. When we are unresponsive he starts going around to each of the boys, punching each one in the groin "to see if you are wearing a cup." I manage to leave the room before he gets to me. I get in my car, a metallic green Honda, and drive to my friend Dan's house. I sit in his room and try to study for my calculus exam. A dog is constantly biting at my ankles. I try to fend him off but he just gets more vicious. Dan comes into the room and says I should beware of the dog; he is rabid. I think to myself that I have not been vaccinated for rabies. I decide to go to the hospital. I get back in the car and drive past my high school again. Outside boys are playing baseball. I think to myself that I should talk to the coach, see if he will let me play for the team even though I am about to graduate. I am slow but I can play first base and pitch. Then I remember that I am 32 years old, and I think to myself that the league probably has a rule against 32-year-olds playing high school baseball.

Trees Never Meet

A note to my readers: in anticipation of my departure for Namibia on January 12, I have started a new blog, which I will use to chronicle my planned ten-month stay in Africa. The blog, already featuring two posts, can be found at http://treesnevermeet.wordpress.com. I hope you will stop by and say hello at some point, especially once I am in Namibia and posting there.

I am watching a pornographic film

The film stars Warren Beatty and Barbara Hershey, and was made in approximately 1979. The film is rather boring; it lacks any hint of beauty. The two characters sit around a kitchen table and talk for a while, then they have sex. They talk for a while more, and have sex again. In some ways, the movie is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, except without any of the good acting or character development.

Halfway through the film my wife walks into the room and tells me that I am getting sick from watching so much porn. She tells me that I am late for school. I pack up my things and go to class.

I am in a large lecture center. The professor is a short, graying man in his mid-sixties. He looks like a statistics professor I had during my freshman year of college. But he is not lecturing about statistics; he is arguing philosophy. At the beginning of the class he picks out a dozen students and tells them to stand up. I am one of the students chosen. Some music begins to play. We are told to dance slowly. The music we hear is the grumblings, grunts, and snorts of a solo trumpet performance. Most of the students look around at each other, utterly bewildered, unsure of what to do. The professor starts yelling at some of them, telling them that they have no spirit, they do not understand life. He comes over to me and announces, "Here is a young man who knows how to move to the music. He has a spirit!" I feel very proud of myself. The professor tells me to sit down. When I do, a young woman comes over and kisses me on the lips. The kiss feels very good. I hope to have sex with her later. Off to my right I see another student who is sneering at me. I think he is jealous of my excellent performance for the class.

The professor continues lecturing. After awhile some police come into the lecture hall. The police announce that class is over; the professor is under arrest for producing pornography. Apparently, a snitch within the class (probably the sneering student to my right) tipped off the police that the professor was a pedophile. The professor defends himself by saying that he was just trying to teach his students about life through music and words. The sneering student interrupts him: "No, no. It was much worse than that. He was having people dance. He spoke rhapsodically about Plato and Socrates. He's weird."

I arise to defend my professor. "His words on Plato and Socrates were quite moving," I say. "He was using his own idiosyncratic pedagogy in order to demonstrate to us the unity of all life. He is not a pedophile."

The professor is handcuffed. As he is being led away by the police, he shouts that the rest of class is canceled, but that he expects us to all finish the readings for next week. I go to pack up my things, disappointed that class has already come to an end. As I file slowly out the door, I catch the eye of the young woman who had kissed me earlier. I decide to follow her. First she heads into a different lecture center, then she leaves and gets on a school bus. I follow her onto the school bus. Sitting next to her, I smile. She smiles back. We do not exchange any words. A younger boy sits down next to me and starts talking. He says he is excited to be going home. He is going to play music when he gets home.

The bus slowly rolls past a funeral home. The boy, gazing out the window, suddenly becomes very quiet, then very anxious. "Oh no," he says. "Please tell me this isn't happening." There is a large crowd in front of the funeral home. Outside in the parking lot is an open coffin. As the bus rolls past, we see that inside the coffin is another young boy who looks similar to the one sitting next to me on the bus. "That's my brother!" he cries. He tells the bus driver to stop and runs out of the bus and towards the coffin. Looking down at his vacated seat, I see that he has left his Ipod. I open the bus window and call out to him. He runs back towards me. Reaching through the bus window, I hand him his Ipod and express my condolensces for the loss of his brother.

I am working in a hospital

I work in administration. It is late in the afternoon. My office cubicle is very cold. My boss has just found out that I have been stealing money from the hospital. Through the thin walls of my cubicle I can hear him calling the police. I get up from my desk, dash down the hall, and sneak into the elevator. I take the elevator down to the ground floor and run out into the parking lot. The parking lot attendant is a young woman who is in the doctoral program in the history department at my university. I explain my predicament to her and she suggests I steal one of the cars in the lot to make my escape. I pick out a car but am unable to hotwire it so that it will start. I hear the sound of police sirens pulling into the parking lot, so I crouch down underneath the steering wheel. The police stay for only a short time before leaving again.

I get out of the car and see my would-be lover standing before me. She looks very beautiful, and I tell her so. She smiles. We decide to go back into the hospital. We head to the maternity ward to look at the newborn babies. As we are walking down one of the halls we encounter a newborn who has been seemingly abandoned on a table in the middle of the hallway. The baby is crying. I pick the baby up and notice that his ears are filled with wax. My would-be lover hands me a Q-tip and I clean out the babies ears. The baby seems much happier. My would-be lover and I decide to take the baby home and raise him as our own. As we are holding him, we hear the sound of footsteps. A group of hospital administrators meets in the hallway to discuss my embezzlement of hospital funds. My would-be lover and I hide around the corner from the meeting. One of the administrators is my aunt, who used to work as a university administrator. When the other administrators tell her that I am responsible for the missing funds, she faints. Collapsing to the ground unconscious, she rolls over near my feet. Her dress is partly pulled down, revealing the top of her pubic hair. I turn away in disgust. One of the hospital administrators, looking on at the scene, tells me not to worry. "Don't feel bad," he says. "She does this all the time."

I am living on a lower floor in the World Trade Center

Living with me are my daughter, one of my best friends from high school and his son, and an unknown woman with whom I want to have sex. The woman has a pack of special condoms that she keeps by her bedside, but she won't let anyone take them. I convince my daughter to go into the woman's bedroom and ask her for a condom. Just as my daughter is about to walk in, I hear an enormous rumbling over my head. The building is collapsing. Quickly I grab my daughter and run out of the building. My best friend also manages to escape, grabbing his son as well. The woman who I wanted to sleep with does not get out of her bed, and she dies in the collapse of the building.

My friend and I decide to go visit the mothers of our children. We leave both of our kids with them and wander up to midtown Manhattan. There is a new building there, about 85 stories high. My friend convinces me that we should climb the building. We hatch our plan and join a tour group that features mostly recently-paroled felons from a nearby prison. While an elderly woman with bright orange hair tells the group about the building's construction, I slip past her and start climbing the building. There are little notches built into the exterior that make the task fairly easy. Soon my friend joins me. As we continue to climb, the elderly woman and the felons down below start yelling at us to come down. Soon they are joined by the police, who bark at us through their bullhorns. We keep climbing. Soon we reach a ledge near the top. My friend stands up and says the wreckage from Ground Zero looks beautiful. I am too nervous to stand and stay crouched close to the ledge.

The dream cuts away to a new scene. Now I am riding in an RV with my wife, my daughter, my friend's son, and my friend's wife. My friend is driving the RV up front. I talk excitedly about how we climbed the building. I am standing in the middle of the RV, next to a couch, gesturing wildly with my hands. Up at the driver's seat, my friend accidentally pushes the wrong button, which causes the floor beneath me to open. I tumble downwards into a mini bathroom, with a toilet and sink. "Holy shit!" I exclaim. "This thing has a toilet!" I call back up to my friend telling him to close the trap door so I don't fall into the toilet again. As I say this I am still standing in the mini-bathroom. My friend hits the button again and the sliding doors close in on me quickly, trapping my skull in their vice-like grip. I groan.

The scene changes again. Now I am watching a commercial on television. The commercial is a preview for an upcoming movie that is a reenactment of our daring trip up the skyscraper. It stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. In the previewed scene, De Niro and Pacino are talking as they slowly climb up the building. Then De Niro slips, Pacino tries to catch him, and they both start sliding down the building. They land in a little crevice that deposits them, like two coins in a slot machine, into an elevator that whisks them to the ground floor. They jump out of the elevator and prepare to start climbing again.

I am stranded on an embankment

One of my professors is swimming in the river. She is calling in students, one after the other, and asking them questions about different books they were supposed to have read. I do not feel well, and it is difficult for me to hold my head up to hear what my professor is saying. My professor calls me into the water. It is very cold. I try to swim against the current, but my body feels very weak and my head feels faint. My professor asks me to describe the challenges faced by mill workers in Chile. I start to give an answer, but the water keeps pushing up into my face, making it difficult to breathe. I am rapidly losing strength. I feel that I am about to drown, but I don't want to complain and disappoint my professor. She asks me another question about Serranos on Mexico's northern frontier during the late nineteenth century. I cannot keep my head above water any longer.

Back to the Land of the Living

The silence that has marked this blog for the past month should now be coming to an end. I had to go through the hell of studying (and then taking) my comprehensive exams, which I thankfully passed yesterday. So hopefully I will be back to posting dreams again now that I have time to think about something other than clove plantations in Zanzibar.

It's sort of odd to reemerge from the cocoon of academia to see what people in the blogosphere are talking about. Oh my God! There's a picture of a drunken Obama speech-writer fondling a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton? I cannot believe that Obama has not immediately fired this person! This is so, so incredibly important! We cannot allow the molestation of pieces of cardboard to go unpunished!

Seriously, get a life. And if you can't get a life, read up on those clove plantations in Zanzibar. You'll kill two birds with one stone by learning something of marginal significance to human society while also not caricaturing yourself and all the values you pretend to stand for.

Okay, rant over. Back to dreams.

Oh, one other thing: I'm leaving for my year in Africa in four weeks. I hope to continue this blog from Africa, but we will see how things go.