Untitled

I don't sleep well in hotels. I never have. I find myself listening for sounds outside the window, noises in the hallway. The beds don't feel like my own. The rooms feel both antiseptic and the linens always feel dirty.

---

At the end of the dream last night, I was sitting on the lawn outside an ivy covered classroom building. I'd just taken a walk that drifted from one campus I'd seen to another. On a bench nearby and the lawn around me were various friends and colleagues. We were talking about life before we were all due at our podiums to shape young minds. Enjoying the sunshine, I'd reached a conclusion: I was going to go back to school. I missed it.

In the sky, we could see a jet flying low. It was a big one, and a friend said "Isn't it amazing?" Another jet entered the picture, flew too close to the first. We laughed, joking about giving the drivers here pilot licenses. The first jet began to spin. It would be cartoonish in the waking world. But this was someplace else and so it spun, and we knew.

We ran. But even in your dreams, you sometimes can't run that fast.

I didn't see it when it hit. What I saw was bright light. One of my friends turned dark, grizzled, dissolved. I felt something tear into me. Burning. Then I, too, dissolved. But slowly.

And only when I was almost entirely atoms and fire and pain did I wake.

----

The day has been quiet. I'm pondering a nap again, after hours of glad-handing and self-promotion. You never know when it is going to be useful.

It is warm outside, and I'd like to go for a walk, but the hotel isn't convenient for that. My lips are chapped - maybe from the dryer weather, maybe a holdover from my day-to-day in colder climates. I look bad in my suit, though not so bad. I'm feeling at odds though not with the trip itself, which has been good.

I don't know.