Had a dream where I was hanging out in my old room in Storrs I guess, on Codfish Falls Road. It felt like I was a teenager. My mom was in the house. I perceived a vague agitation and antipathy from her. A vibration of hers that is familiar from real life. A mild impatience and disapproval. I felt somehow that she thought I was lazy. Someone was sick and in the hospital – my cousin M. or someone – and there was talk of what do we do, when do we go see her. The operating system on my laptop had somehow reset itself and the OS X dock contained the large, default icons rather than the ones I had placed there and resized.

Slept many hours of jetlag sleep, dark and dreamless at first but then full of vivid dreams. I was a quarterback - a black quarterback, so it must have been inspired by the video game ad where an unsuspecting white teen gets Michael Vick's point of view. The defense seemed deficient - only the four linemen and two defensive backs. We were on their goal line. It was snowing. Echoes of the Ice Bowl. I noticed that the DBs were tired, winded from defending our drive. I found myself in shotgun formation. The snap came. I bobbled it briefly then backed up, scrutinizing my wideout as he completed his route. He was covered. I threw to him anyway - overthrew him in the end zone.

Then I was a punt returner. I caught it and was face to face with my tackler. I feigned left, toward the sideline, then bolted right and was, as they say, off to the races.

Throughout the night I dreamt of some awful, intractable theorem that I was working on with some degree of success but no full solution. It seemed important, overarching. I tried to contribute to it again and again through the phases of my sleep.