I awoke to a house full of revelers. Some people I knew, some I didn’t, some from back in high school. Our home was not our apartment but a house in the country on a hilly plot, with several satellite buildings, like T. J.’s place in Storrs. I was in a foul mood and said fuck a couple times, then felt ashamed because everyone was having a good time and who was I to interfere? Long lines formed for the bathrooms—there seemed to be two, each in a different building. I had a vintage car in the garage, an old white muscle car from the ‘60s in disrepair. T. R. was trying to get it started and had a little luck. I wondered what he’d done, fucking around with the engine to get it going. I was circulating amongst the crowd, starting to have a better time but anxious about the mess and destruction that surely would be left behind. I found myself in a room with a few people. One of them handed me a cup of liquid with little bits of paper suspended in it. I assumed it was a psychedelic, maybe blotter acid. I drank it somewhat reluctantly. What the hell, I thought.

Corvette was a proud English company. Its president had worked on the atom bomb in the Great War.

I got on a bus and found a seat in the back with a footstool. I began reading a gigantic novel.

I went back in time, living in a dorm room. Some semi-famous musicians came to jam in the room, which then became an arena, or a large performing space anyway. Tight 70s rockers, like David Lindley. The bass player took a drum solo, wandering around a maze of giant drums. The guitar player talked to us after about cars, about rebuilding muscle cars. He wanted to stay in touch, to play with us sometime. It was me, J.T., some vague others.

We drove up a winding road that unexpectedly became snowy. We were going a bit fast but I felt like I was in control. The road got narrower and eventually we could see we wouldn’t pass. It became a footpath leading into woods. We stood outside the car and contemplated it.

We were late one morning. Sara sent me and Jackie off in a Lyft so I could drop her off quicker at school. I realized during the trip that it was a driverless car and pointed it out excitedly to Jackie, who didn’t really seem to care. Then I noticed the driver and felt embarrassed that I’d said aloud that we were in a driverless car. He’d now driven way past where he should have turned. I called out to him. He couldn’t hear me because he was wearing headphones. Finally he did, and responded in French. I explained to him in French what he’d done and where he now needed to go.

We were driving somewhere up north, for the second time in two weeks. I wondered if we had enough gas. A quarter tank. That should be fine. S. wondered how long the car would hold up. I said a while, even though it was old. Before it died it would start to break down and eventually something would happen we didn’t want to pay for—the transmission or something.

The last part of the trip was on foot. There were lots of bags to carry but they were light, so we managed. We stopped somewhere for food but I wasn’t hungry. There was a strawberry milkshake on the menu and I asked S. if she’d order it.

P. S. from the record store was giving me a ride to a gig, along with another friend of the band’s. We stopped at a grocery store to buy beer or something and they left without me. I was furious, indignant. Eventually they came back to get me. P. apologized but he was drunk, driving erratically. Acting manic and strange.

I was contemplating Tom Waits songs, which ones make me cry the most. I thought it might be “Tango Till They’re Sore.”

My arms were amputated up to the elbows. But I had a new pair. The old ones were disembodied on a table before me and I found I could still control them a little, though they were developing rigor mortis.

There was a convertible slowly ferrying drunks around town. You could hop on and off wherever, from a bar to your doorstep pretty much. JP was riding it. I saw the car let him out on the sidewalk. He was pretty wasted.

I sold my car for $750 to a rich guy who lived by the sea in LA. I was with S. and J. and a few other people, maybe in multiple cars. We pulled into the driveway and marveled at the compound, made up of several extravagant log cabins. The man strode out to greet us and handed me the cash. The car was already in his possession. How is it? I asked. Great, he said, great, and I wondered if I’d underpriced it. There were a few empty bottles left on the floor, he said. I said sorry, we like to recycle those. Thinking: We like to recycle those back home in New York City. Could you take care of them? I asked, and he agreed. I gazed through a screen of trees at the beach.

We were trying to play a Dylan tune, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” I think, at C.W.’s instruction. I asked him whether a change at the end was really F sharp minor to D major seventh. We were driving somewhere in little cars, remote control cars that we both rode in and controlled from afar. I kept bumping into the car ahead of me. We had a gig somewhere, an outdoor space, like a festival. It was weird, we had a lot of technical problems, starting and stalling.

I was riding in a car with three other people, not clear who they were. I was wearing a suit and tie for some reason. I felt self-conscious, being the only one dressed up. We drove into San Diego. I realized we’d just recently driven into LA. The highway became a dirt road, like a dirt path through a massive construction project. “It’s always so weird coming into these southern Californian cities,” I remarked. “Always so dreary.” We passed the football stadium and realized that it being Sunday, the team was playing at that exact time. In the dream they were the Rangers.

I had just entered high school. It was a good school, well-regarded, but authoritarian. We all had to get used to being yelled at by teachers, their strict demands. There was a bass player in the school who was a prodigy. Kids gathered in the hallway to watch him through the window of a band rehearsal room. He was warming up with ridiculous thumb-popping riffs. Then he and a band played some heavy metal tune. It segued into a Michael Jackson song.

Something about a sweater someone lost at a bar. I offered to go back and get it. A car like a go-kart or a dune buggy, its rear wheels bogged down in the mud.

Wires on the Mountain

Sara had given me a Christmas or birthday gift that consisted of playing pool with Neil Young. The location was a bar somewhere, and many other people were there too. I realized that Neil would be splitting his time with everyone else who had booked the experience and that I wouldn’t be able to chat with him much. For some reason my dad was with me. Two guys who worked for Neil came in and sat with us, kind of prepping us for his arrival. One of them looked like him and I realized it was his brother. I mentioned to the other one that I assumed this was all for charity, and it was impressive that Neil would give his time like this. The guy shook his head no, it was not charity. “Oh, it’s a money-making enterprise?” I asked, and the guy left it at that.

When Neil came in he made the rounds and eventually came over to shake my hand. There was a bandstand with equipment set up and my dad said, with little enthusiasm, “It looks like Sting is going to actually play.” I was mortified that he confused Neil Young with Sting.

The pool games started. Sure enough, Neil wandered from table to table, taking a turn here and there in half-assed games where no one could remember what balls to hit. At my table he lined up a shot where the cue ball and the object ball were bottlecaps. I tried to gather up in my mind all the things I wanted to say to him, all the questions I might ask, but they evaded me. Finally I said, “You’ve played this game before, haven’t you?” I thought it was a clever reference to the hours and hours of intoxicated pool he played with his band while recording “Tonight’s the Night.” He seemed to get it. He smiled and said yeah, I guess I have. He missed the bottlecap shot and was off to another table.

I was disappointed in the experience but also disappointed in myself for not making the most of it anyway. I resolved to make some kind of connection with Neil. The next time he came around I remembered that he had started an ice cream business. “I didn’t realize you were so into ice cream,” I said, and he just kind of nodded and smiled. The event ended and we all left. There was a crazy old car in a driveway next to the bar, a big, wood-paneled station wagon from the sixties. A band of comedians were leaning out of windows in the building next to it, looking at it, looking at us. I found Neil seated at a sort of ticket booth in the wall of another building. This was my chance to have some meaningful conversation with him. “Neil, how’s your creative life?” I asked. He came out the door and walked with me. He said there hadn’t been much going on but that this morning he went outside and looked up and he saw there were wires on top of the mountain, and he found some kind of beauty or hope in it. I was suddenly very moved, close to tears. “That could be the beginning of a song,” I said, and he agreed.

I was crossing a city street and a white van sped past behind me, out of control. It smashed into the side of a parked car and went on its zig-zaggy way.

I was driving around with Mark B., listening to music. A very funky African tune came on. He said it sounded like a famous tune by a particular musician—I can’t remember what name he cited, but I don’t think it was anyone in real life. I noticed he was right, and said it sounded like a slowed-down remix. The tune was “Ja Funmi” by King Sunny Adé.

Had a dream featuring Robert Duvall. He was in charge of some kind of operation and I was a part of it, but sort of a remote part of it. I wasn’t close to him in the logistics. But at a certain point I encountered him and had the opportunity to address him. I needed to refer to a car for some reason. A car that was in use during the operation. All along, I thought it was a BMW. A convertible. White. But upon closer inspection I noticed that it was an Alfa-Romeo. “Bobby,” I called out to him. I said something about the Beemer, no, sorry, I mean the Alfa-Romeo. I was wondering all the time, is it OK to call him Bobby? I was a little bit worried that he wouldn’t want me to call him Bobby.

Dreamt about some awful car accident.

I was reading an anthology of several comic strips. The first one was written in, and set in, 1970. The character was describing his car, a beater of the period that he had trouble with but that got forty miles per gallon as long as he didn't drive it too fast. I thought about all the times I'd driven my cars too fast, and not gotten good enough mileage. There were at least two other cartoonists featured in the book. One was a woman with a particularly good one. Can't remember much about it, though.

I was at a party back in Connecticut, in a big, cluttered house, that had been going on for some time, maybe days. Finch arrived at a certain point and we were trying to remember whether one of us had loaned the other twenty dollars the night before to buy drugs. We couldn't figure it out so we let it go. Then it was seven o'clock in the morning. Everyone else was asleep but me and Jesse. I was reading the paper, a little annoyed and bewildered that I was up so early. Jesse was negotiating something with an official person, possibly Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. But this person soon became a woman.