I am an absurd older woman who has recently been on a game show in which the contestants design hats for Queen Elizabeth II. She didn't like the hat I designed. So after the show I am walking down the streets of New York, and I find a small Chinese restaurant that isn't open yet, but the door is unlocked. So I go inside and decide to sit in the restaurant in the dark until it opens. The chairs are made of black wrought-iron with bright orange cushions that look like Chinese lanterns. The tables are small and round with white lace tablecloths.

Soon two chefs in white chef coats walk in and say to me, "Just a minute!" Following them is a wave of patrons, and I'm suddenly self-conscious that I'm the first one there. But no one takes any notice of me. I look down at the table and find that it has become long and rectangular, and I'm sitting facing the door at one end of the rectangle. I am now myself.

There are a bunch of people sitting next to me, but most noticeably across from me is a very attractive young man. I say to him, "Sei Italiano?"

He says, "Si! [Something incomprehensible]"

I reply, "Um. Mi dispiace, ma non posso comprendere."

He looks offended and says, "What!?"

And I say, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. I can only speak a little Italian. Poi parlare más despacio, por favor?"

"Espanol," he says.

"Mi dispiace, ma non posso parlare molto bene in Italiano."

He looks offended again, and I ask why. He says, "You just said 'I'll fuck the cow on the purple horizon!"

I repeat myself, but much slower. He is relieved and says, "Oooh, I understand now. You must speak slower."

"You have to too," I say.

We are walking through this strange L-shaped space that is kind of like a mix of Leaps and Bounds and a creative writing classroom at Columbia. I am engaged to Jeremy Clarkson's son. We are about to have twin boys, and we are discussing names. Jeremy's son asks if one of them can be named James. I say that that name is perfect, because I want to name the other one Jeremy. When I say this, Jeremy Clarkson, who is walking with us, wearing a short-sleeved light blue monochrome quasi-Hawaiian shirt (like the one my dad has), turns and looks at me at this point, tears welling in his eyes, and says, "Really?" And I say, "Yes. Of course." It occurs to me then that we would be naming our child after his grandfather, though I've always wanted to name my son Jeremy, regardless of any connection to Clarkson.

Somehow the discussion turns to dogs. There is a small Yorkie running around, and it belongs to a woman who I assume to be Jeremy Clarkson's wife. We do something with the dog, but I don't remember what. I suddenly realize that Jeremy's son is not really interested in me, and he starts to disappear.

But then James May is there, and he thinks that I am extraordinarily beautiful. He has his hair cut, too, which I'm very pleased with. We decide very quickly that we are in love, and I apologize to him that one of our children will be named Jeremy. He says, in his voice with his accent, "That's alright. But we'll have to have a third so we can name him Richard."

We (Sean, Garrett, Ashley and I) are traveling in an open wagon. I am lying down looking up at the sky, mostly fascinated with the profusion of trees blossoming with small white flowers (cherry blossoms?). I close my eyes for a while, just seeing black, and open them occasionally just to see the white flowers overhead against a perfectly blue sky. We keep driving along until we get to this narrow rope bridge over a green canyon. Ashley and Sean cross first, then Garrett crosses, leaving behind playing cards balancing on the rope bridge. He tells me that I have to pick them all up as I cross. But it has gotten windy, so I don't want to cross the bridge anymore.

Later I'm on the third floor of a tall, narrow, carpeted house. I look out the window and see that snow is falling and gathering on a green unfrozen lake.

I wake up in my childhood bed (with the wooden white posts and light blue striped comforter) on the edge of Venice, where we saw that spectacular sunset with the clouds that looked like tidal waves. In a cloud overhead, thousands of these large owl/pigeon birds have made nests, and now that the clouds are shrinking, the nests (which look like squirrel nests) plummet into the canal. The owl/pigeons have round beakless faces that are striped, as though someone drew them not really knowing how to convey feathers. One of the nests falls next to my bed, though I don't notice. I only notice when an owl/pigeon creature dives low over my bed to protect the egg still unharmed in the nest. It thinks I'm out to get the baby. So it rises again, this time with four or five comrades, and dives straight for my bed.

My mom and I are walking through this maze-like store looking for something (I can’t remember what). We turn a corner and see 8th-grade aged Leslie and Ari oohing and ahing over a violin on display. I look at it and immediately thing it can’t be worth much because the front is pieced together and not carved from one solid piece of wood. Leslie turns around and sees us and says, “Look! It has a clay bridge!” I can’t believe it so I go over to it and pick it up. The top of it isn’t a scroll, but a handle like a shovel. Then I look at the body, but I realize that it is carved from one piece of wood—the f-holes are just really long and crowding the rest of the face. It doesn’t look right. The bridge is also a pink color instead of light tan. I start to play it, and it sounds really good. Then Michael Becker comes in and tells me the violin costs $6,000. I say that I can’t afford that and that it’s too big anyway. Then I ask him if you can just buy the clay bridge separately and he can’t really understand at all what I’m asking.

Walking down the streets of Venice (though decidedly NOT Venice, but interior, crowded, narrow streets with tiny doors people climb into that lead to elevators that take you over the canal), entering a bar with an English waitress who wants to know the name of the hotel you’re staying at, so you give her your information. But you know it’s too late to catch a train back to your home town, so you decide to sit up all night in the bar.

Something about Cary going to the bathroom for a LONG time, and me waiting outside on the phone, looking inside at his brother(s).

Then later my parents and I are fugitives from someone. We're in a small room packing our belongings together. I have mine in a cloth satchel and a big plastic bag from Bed Bath & Beyond. We start our journey in a Jeep, but as we drive down the street. all these children are lined up on the street, stacked like they're running on a track. Apparently the children are hostages used by the people who are at us to slow us down. We turn around to try and avoid the children, but there are more behind us. We're getting boxed in. One of the kids starts to run, and so we squeeze through that opening. But then there's a big barricade of armored vehicles, and someone shouts, "There they are!! Shoot them!" I'm suddenly driving, and I duck my head down. Somehow the car explodes and we all survive, but we have to pretend we're dead or else they'll shoot us. The bad guys come around and take our picture to prove that we're dead, but one guy swears he can see me breathing. It's suddenly really hard to control my breathing. Luckily for me, nobody believes him. I jump up and scare him once just because I can.

Somehow we get back on the road, which is now a big long hallway. We get to the end of it, which actually turns into a corner attached to another room. As we run past, I ask my parents who is after us, and they say they don't know. Then on a drinking fountain is a sign that says, "SOME VERSION OF ORKERS." We turn the corner and in the back of the room is an elevator. As we're waiting for the elevator to come, I notice a sign that says, "My name is B. Harrison. You were wearing a _____. I was too. We have the same birthday." I knew instantly that the note was from Blake, but not meant for me.

We board the elevator, which doesn't take us anywhere, but instead we wait a couple of seconds and one of the walls becomes a door that leads to this big open space that looks like the back of a stage. My parents turn into Jordan Watkins and some other guy. Apparently we've been invited back here by the owners to play their huge piano. I get a look at it; it's about eight feet long, and has to have a thousand keys. As we walk through the room, my parents (who have turned back into themselves say, "It's a good thing they couldn't find us. Could you imagine if we'd led them here?" Then I look at the people that have invited us, a happy-looking suburbanite couple pouring punch from a bowl into little paper cups.

There's a buzz at the door we came through, and I go to make sure the door is locked. It's a little bit open, so I try to start to close it, but it's so heavy I can't. Nick Reczynski manages to squeeze his way through the door, asking what this room is back here, and how he can get in, and how he's heard of this room and it's not fair that he can't see it. I somehow force him out, but then Reneé Brown slips through the door. I push here back and seal the door.

I go back to the piano, which is now a pond, and someone asks me, "Ellen, did you ever have ducklings?"

I say, "No, I don't remember having any."

"Oh, maybe you were too young."

I look at my mom and she says, "Oh, we had ducklings. You just don't remember, that's all."

I'm in a small classroom, and Rob Smith is teaching, but he looks like from Daniel Craig from Casino Royale. He's talking about something (this part of the dream is very hazy, but it's important because it comes back later), and the class is sitting in a circle around him.

The scene suddenly changes so that we're in the middle of a big gymnasium. There's a big black rectangular box hanging down from the ceiling, and it's playing some kind of traditional music. There's this young black janitor guy (who looks like the guy who cleans the Williston hallway) who's wandering around. Rob Smith kind of goes away at this point, and the class starts to run around the gym in time with the music pumping out of the black box. The angle of my view point sweeps up so that I can see over the top of the box, which seems to just be floating at this point. The janitor guy is up on the box, and he's putting this HUGE hat over the box. It's so big that it's even too big for the box, so he takes the little excess around the girth and ties it off (you know, how it was fashionable to do in the early nineties with your shirts). Suddenly the hat makes rap start pumping out of the box instead of the traditional music. Everybody running around gets really excited.

These long, silvery tendrils come out of the box and stretch up to the ceiling. The students all start climbing them (how they get on the box I don't know), but by now there are teachers who have heard the music and run under the box and start yelling at the students to get off. I'm suddenly in the tangle of silvery ropes, and I see my mom amongst the group of teachers.

Then I "wake up" in my dream, though I am still dreaming in reality. I'm in my American Literature classroom, and Rob Smith is teaching again, this time looking like himself. I have the knowledge all of a sudden that South Park is doing an episode that appears to look JUST like the part of my dream where Daniel Craig/Rob Smith was teaching in before, except that their depiction of Daniel/Rob is a round-headed, red-head with a massive widow's peak. I get really weirded-out by this, and chalk it up to the Collective Unconscious, and multiple people having this dream.

I want to tell Rob Smith about the dream I had about him, but he's busy eating this enormous plate of bananas foster with the people sitting next to him. I get kind of jealous that they get to eat the dessert and we don't, but the table then gets covered with plates and plates of different desserts. Everyone starts passing them around, but they never get to me. Finally a plate of brownies with some red sauce comes my way, and someone takes a brownie and slices off a tiny sliver and gives it to me without any of the sauce. I get really angry that I can't get any desserts, but I look down and my own plate is overflowing with them.

Helen and I are at the airport ready to go abroad. She's going to Japan and I'm going to Florence. The airport looks like a small, carpeted, low-ceilinged, office space. There is a glass wall on that divides the room in half, and I'm on the west side. There is a line that is forming that leads out a door to where I assume the plane is. Apparently it's illegal to travel with clothes because they're a precious commodity (or something), so there's this guy in the middle of the room running a black market scheme that allows you to keep your clothes and still travel. He has this device that looks like a wide treadmill, and you lay down on it, and it strips your clothes off and what comes out is the raw fabric that went into making the clothes. (Apparently it's not illegal to transport cloth.) You have to go through the treadmill a few times though, since it will only peel off the parts of clothes that touch the belt. Somehow when I stand up after going through it a few times, I still have clothes on and it's not a problem. I get some really cool gold embroidered fabric, though.

Then I'm suddenly in Italy. I want to take pictures of this street (which looks like a weird deserted suburbia), so I look around for my camera. It's in this huge case, and when I reach into it, the case is full of chipped up pieces of tires. Someone explains to me that in order to transport the camera safely during the flight, they had to fill it with these rubber pellets. I stick my hand into them to get the camera and they feel exactly like you would imagine they do.

I remember nothing except that I am in a blue public bathroom and there's a tiny smudge of poop in front of toilet in the handicapped stall, and my pant leg gets in it and smears it. And I think my mom had just gone in there before me.