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2002-03-12 | 5:56 p.m.

Don't have much time so I'm writing in the box. Early this morning I dreamed that I was in a busy place with lots of other people around. We were part of a blocks-long celebration of some kind. Christmas, I think, but very lively, and it seemed like the whole town was there. The place we were in was big, stately, and grandiose, like a hotel ballroom, with dark mahogany paneling on the walls, and connected to the buildings beside it like casinos sometimes are. But then we came under some kind of unseen attack. The building was shaking, as in an earthquake, but there was a kind of certainty among us that this was an attack and not a natural disaster. Then I looked around and saw Caitlin, a little girl who goes to school with the girls and whose mother is a friend of mine. Caitlin gets freaked out easily and I could see that she was trembling uncontrollably and had tears in her eyes. I felt I had to get her to her parents immediately. Maybe the attack had already ended, or maybe we were all about to die. I couldn't be sure of anything except that Caitlin really needed her parents at this moment. I grabbed her hand and said, "Let's go find your Mom and Dad."

We started traveling through the buildings, encountering much resistance from men who spoke as if they were in charge somehow. That's another reason why I get the casino connection, because they seemed like the casino managers I worked with, and other kinds of middle managers who always want to tell people what to do even when they haven't the slightest idea what's going on. I'm talking about guys whose authority jones overrides a very small intellect. So I'm nodding and smiling and blowing past these guys, with little towheaded Caitlin marching alongside me, quiet but steadfast.

I had the sense that my friend and her husband had been eating dinner a couple buildings down from us so when I got closer, I started asking around for them. "Do you know Tom Shylock?" I asked an informed-looking man in shirt and tie. Yes, he said, after sizing us up, and gave me detailed directions to where they were. I felt relieved, but there was something a little bit off about his reply, and I knew to be on my guard.

Then I woke up, and I realized their name isn't Shylock. It's Shaughnessy! That guy was totally lying to me! And that's how I started my day completely creeped out by aliens among us.

But why Caitlin I couldn't quite figure. Except I suppose that she represents childhood at its most vulnerable.

I used to dream semi-continuously about my dog, Daisy, having some sort of dreadful accident. Daisy was always getting loose and getting into trouble, or so it seemed. Actually, she didn't get loose all that often, but I felt as if she were completely outside my control. I had no control over her and I wasn't properly protecting her, so I had these anxiety dreams that she would die as a result of my negligence. Once, for example, she drowned in a swimming pool when I was very close by. But I had to laugh the time I woke from a deeply disturbing dream in which Daisy got hit by a train and walked home carrying her torn-off leg in her mouth, like a newspaper.

It's funny to me because even in this horrifying crisis, my brain delivered a Daisy that was the picture of self-sufficiency. Which she was.

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