A headhunter forwarded me a job opportunity working for a major hotel. It would be some business executive type job, not my thing, but tempting, maybe for that reason. The lengthy description included details about a project that had been very difficult for their team to achieve, calling it a “terse, bittersweet success.” Evidently the new hire was expected to improve on that. Also there were weird perks, like “a blonde personal secretary.” Then I was watching as a female colleague at my current job took a position there. She too would be doing very different work.

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.

My job involved driving back and forth from two locations, offices in nondescript industrial parks. I had to be at one by 10 am. In the real world the room was cold and the wind howled outside the window, and this penetrated the dream, or interfered in it a bit. Several of my teeth crumbled in my mouth like rock candy. I spat the shards into my hand and hoped I could bring them to the dentist.

C.W. was living in Manhattan and hosting regular parties. Peter Tosh was there, sitting on the couch. He had no dreadlocks. “Downpresser Man” played on the stereo and it sounded ghostly and beautiful, some kind of dub version. I was proud that he was there. We were low on beer, so I asked C. for some money. We both ended up going downstairs to look for a liquor store.

The rebels’ manifesto needed updating. The entire section on human rights. But that would have to wait. They were conducting raids. Another water hoarder’s land had been forcibly reclaimed. He was shot as he stood on his second floor deck. He knew what was coming so he took a long drink of whisky from a bottle. He wanted that to be the last taste in his mouth I guess. Two shooters got him, first in the chest and then the head, and he tumbled down over the railing and fell to the grass below. Now we all invaded his lair, made ourselves at home. Took all his water, of course.

An ad in the campus paper claimed that Led Zeppelin was playing a run at a local bar. Each performance would feature another entire album. I told G. E. I wanted to go so bad, I said, I’d even go to In Through the Out Door night. I wanted to do it all. Meet Jimmy Page, give him a hug. But first we had to make sure it wasn’t a joke.

In last night’s work dream there were two jobs that had languished and now needed to get done.

The jet lag dreams seemed to arrive intertwined, or one within another. I overslept and realized I had to contact people at work. I decided to call in sick—in fact I was sick, I thought, with some kind of cough and fever. It was 11:10—pretty late for this, but still morning at least. I reached my boss by instant message. All the while I was working on a complicated project. It wasn't much like my actual job—maybe more like my old one. I thought about writing, about how easy it is. Just pick a time period, a circumstance. An ordinary, put-upon man in 19th-century France. He marries a woman and finds he cannot satisfy her. He becomes obsessed. What's wrong with her? What's wrong with him? This is writing. I heard French chanson and someone asked, “Who is this?” and I said Jacques Brel, and then I realized it couldn't be him—“Jacques Brel has quite a strong accent,” and this singer did not. “It must be Charles Aznavour,” I concluded. In the meantime Brel was doing an acrobatic act as part of his show. Swinging with a woman on trapezes that led higher and higher. I considered how scary and dangerous this was and imagined I was him. I'd quit right away, abandon whatever was left of the engagement. But what excuse would I give to save face? “I'm bored,” I'd tell them all. We were living in a big house, me and Sara and my siblings, maybe some others. My brother was staying in a room at the end of the kitchen. He'd left a pan on the stove with butter burning. I turned it off, thinking he'd gone to sleep and forgotten. He emerged, explaining that he was thinking of staying awake until some ungodly hour, like five o'clock, when he was to visit a morgue as required by a study program he was in. He dreaded it. He described the corpses he'd have to see, “their flesh torn by polyester strings,” and I knew exactly what he was talking about, and told him so. In the other corner of the kitchen I was cooking something with rice, brownies, and candied almonds. My sister Weezie came in and peered at it curiously. Later my brother again had something on the stove, and again I turned it off, and again he came out of his room. “I'm sorry,” I said, “I really thought you were asleep.”