In the dream I am standing on the running board of a helicopter and holding on to the craft through the door. I am not afraid of falling and this is new to my noticing but has lived inside of me for a long time. I am flying over the city that raised me with all of its buildings and expanses of bridge over water - entrances and exits and all that road in between. This is a living organism: it breathes and stretches. I can feel the weight of it, the heaviness and lightness. I see the places the light touches and the shadows cast depending on the hour or who lives where or how much time and opportunity it has all had to grow. It is dusk now and the fog is rolling in. It is calm and strong, and I am calm and strong, and the water surrounding this place is calm and strong, like the mother of it all and the mother always survives.

In the dream I sit for an hour each day looking out of a window whose view is now so familiar to me. I am at a table made of one long cut of a tree. The writing on the window is reversed and sometimes I feel like I am in a pet store as people walk by and peer into this little church of thought and caffeine. The trucks go by. The cars go by. The people go by. I keep coming back to watch these things moving and to sit still. I am waiting for something to arrive for me. I am waiting to say, "Oh, there you are." I sit still and watch the things go by.

In the dream everyone I know is the same person with different faces and I am one of us.

In the dream I wrote a book called The Weekend I Fell Apart, and it was a cautionary tale about not eating enough snacks. I wrote a note in my iPhone in the middle of the night that said, "Maybe eat more pretzels next time," and now I'm wondering if I'm not getting enough water.

In the dream I am army-crawling out the front door in the middle of the night and feeling very guilty the entire time.