An old man sitting in a chair outside my door. A giant beetle crawling around the threshold. I crushed it with the bristles of a broom. Its goopy entrails gumming them up.

Eleanor's dad Antony wrote to say she'd died. She drank ''sour plusmilk,'' he said. He was a bit flippant about the whole thing. ''That's the way the music tastes sometimes,'' he said.

Woman, Every Jesus Came Out of You

Had an agonized dream about something impossible, like entering two dimensions. Then I was browsing titles at a record store. It seemed to me they were LPs, not CDs. I found an album by some Marvin Gaye-esque soul singer who was famous but only existed in my dream. I don't remember his name. I read the song titles, listed to the right of the front of the jacket, which featured a picture of him shirtless in front of a dark background. One of the songs was titled, "Woman, Every Jesus Came Out of You."

I dreamt that I was Johnny Damon's friend. We were hanging out in what appeared to be a combination of a school, my job, and a ski lodge or campground. Or something. He also was Scott Simmons, my friend who died on a motorcycle years ago. It hadn't occurred to me until the dream that they look alike. I was intrigued and proud that I was Johnny Damon's friend. It being late in the season, I asked him if he was tired. He said he was, a little, but that overall he was OK.

I was in some sprawling, shabby shopping center, a bit like the Chinese mall in Chinatown where there's that big dim sum place, or some smalltown galleria. Buried in the back of a food court was a combination bowling alley and Internet cafe. It was called "Hurl and Url."

I was seated at a dinner table with eight or so people. To my right, at the end of the table, was a woman who was in conversation with the man facing her. The table became a magical pool of water, about six inches deep, with no sides and the tablecloth sort of floating on its surface. The fact that the water did not spill out the sides seemed to attributable to some counterintuitive yet inviolable law of physics. With some effort I remembered the name of it.

"That's the miracle of surface tension," I remarked.

I came upon B.M. and S.M. while driving what appeared to be a soap box derby car down a narrow, rutted dirt road. They stood under a grove of trees which I understood to be their home.

"What are you up to?" I asked.

"We're tearing old men out of each others' chests," B. replied. S. was evidently pregnant and I took this comment to be a wry allusion to the fact.