I was stuck in the posh apartment of an obscure Kennedy. He and his wife were there when I arrived but had to brusquely excuse themselves to attend to some family emergency. I was pleased to have the run of the place but chagrined when I saw a clock and it was 1:30 in the afternoon – I realized I'd have to stay there alone for the entire day and night, unable to leave until they returned as I had no keys. I sat down to watch TV in the den and they had an ancient remote control, from the '70s. I couldn't quite understand how to make it work. I found a button that chose a random channel and the channel it found was the Pants Channel. All about pants. I found this amusing. Then I switched again and I saw a news report about bombings in Baghdad, and suddenly I was in Baghdad, watching the aftermath of the bombings with a crowd of ghoulishly curious Westerners. The main road into town was the road into Storrs, Route 195. In fact Baghdad was Storrs, though I didn't realize this in the dream, and the smoking debris from the bombings were buildings on the UConn campus on the west side of the road. People were breaching some kind of police or military barricade and defiantly entering town. Some had bags of ice, clearly a rare commodity there, with the intention of using it to party.

Also had a dream about the Super Bowl. The Steelers fumbled again in the red zone, like Bettis did against the Colts. A Seahawk recovered and ran with it and appeared to be headed for a touchdown when a Steeler tackled him from behind.

Then I dreamt about Mom. Curiously, she was in the States, and people were wondering if she wanted to go back to Paris for some reason. I thought she wouldn't, as Pierre was dead and he's the only reason she'd want to go. I had the disturbing thought that maybe she'd forgotten he was dead, or maybe forgotten about him altogether, in the advanced stages of her dementia.

B.M. had shaved his head. He was talking about something in current events, which is funny because he never talks about that. Something about U.S. foreign policy or something, some incident that was noteworthy but out of date by a couple of weeks. Then we were watching the news on TV, others were there. Suddenly the news showed footage of some outdoor party we'd been to. You could see us in the scene, lolling on the grass near a tree, surrounded by other guests.

Then I was in the lobby of a theater. There was some special performance that night, some play or opera or something. People were dressed fancy. I felt self-conscious in my green T-shirt. Interestingly, it was the same T-shirt that I'd worn that day – yesterday, that is – in real life. In that way the dream reality was a direct extension of waking reality. M.B. approached in some kind of tuxedo. He looked strangely effeminate, effete. He was double-fisting a white Russian and a scotch on the rocks. "White Russian and scotch?" I asked him incredulously. He nodded in a glum way. Then I was waiting to get into the theater. In another auditorium in the same building a rock band was going to play. It was some highly anticipated reunion of a legendary indie rock band. The line I was in wound by their dressing room. The band emerged, costumed and made up, to a great commotion of security guards, hangers on and curious fans. I tried to imagine what band they were but I had no idea. There were a couple of women and a couple of men in it. The line slowed to a halt from a bottleneck at the turnstile. I looked around me for diversion. The bar had some kind of wonderful contraption that automatically poured big plastic cups of scotch and water and smaller cups of scotch on the rocks. I was mesmerized by it for a while then realized there was no one ahead of me in line and I was holding people up. I looked behind me and my dad was there, looking a little quizzical. I went in and was relieved to see people still milling about their seats, the performance not yet having begun.

In one dream I was doing computer copy-paste on a piece of cloth laid out on a table. I was creating something for a woman standing nearby, some sort of craft. Maybe she was S. S. I traced my finger lightly over the fabric to make the copying and pasting commands.

Remarkable dream. I was at a car race with familiar people - maybe C.W., C.K., others, I don't know. It was essentially a stock-car race, but on a road course. A fascinating, sinuous track. And the cars were older muscle cars for the most part. We were perched on a jutting hill at a corner, with views of the cars approaching and the cars going away. For some reason I was aware that Chuck Brown, the Godfather of Go-Go, was in the race. During the warm-up lap, I saw his car approach. For some reason I knew what car to look for, a '70s-era boat, slightly pimpy but modified for speed. When he drove by I cried out, "Go Chuck! Yeah Chuck!" I hoped that he'd see me, even hear me somehow, but I was not confident that he did. I perceived his characteristic sunglassed, grinning face as he drove by.

When the race began I was terrified by the pace and aggression of the driving. It impressed upon me the audacity of the drivers and the arduousness of their task. I gazed up the track and saw an accident start to happen, the terrible inevitability of the chain of events. An official was walking right by the track, in the same direction as the race, unaware of the chaos unfolding behind him. At this moment I noticed that he, and other officials near him, were black. He was brutally clipped by a fishtailing car. Suddenly, as though this awful event were their cue, other officials around the track pulled out guns. They, too, were black. They declared that they were taking all the spectators hostage. It seems they had some kind of radical slavery-reparation agenda. Immediately I was shaken down and fearfully produced all the money in my wallet, about $200. Armed men were posted strategically throughout the crowd, to keep watch over us, make sure we didn't try anything funny. It grew apparent that this group had somehow posed as an independent race organizing outfit and had subcontracted the running of the event from the governing body. I thought we were good and fucked, gonna die. At one point I managed to surreptitiously dial 911 through my pants, on the cell phone in my pocket. I heard the operator's voice answering, inquiring, as though she were on speakerphone. I was terrified that one of these sentries would hear it. Finally, and seemingly against all odds, some sort of settlement had been arranged between the group and authorities somewhere and we were released.

I was in a subway train on my way to work. J. P. was there too – for some reason we had the same commute, and this seemed normal. I sat facing him and behind his head was a partition leading to where the conductor sat. I could see out the front window of the train. We were traveling through the hilly outskirts of some unknown, vaguely European city. There were many, many yellow houses perched on the hills, overlooking the valley of the train tracks. Yellow houses glowing in the morning sun. J. P. said, "Are you going to be in one of those moods again?" referring to my occasional dark moods in the office. "As a matter of fact, no," I replied sort of brightly. I looked down and noticed I was wearing socks but no shoes. I stood up and did a sort of shtick for J. P. and the conductor and a woman who was now standing there about what a fool I am, I got up and got dressed and everything, left the apartment – no shoes! I envisioned having to buy shoes from a shoe store across Canal Street from the office, a store which only existed in the dream.

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.