Inside? Outside? Is there more I've forgotten that precedes what follows? Probably. There was a jumble of things and I know for sure the last part was last but...
Let's say it was the girl.
I was inside but there were screened windows all around that barely kept the outside out. It was sunny and vaguely tropical. I was looking at a computer screen, maybe a tablet or pad with a message from a girl. An e-mail? An IM? A web page? This girl was young and not necessarily pretty but pleasant enough. How did I have her picture? Was it on the screen or only in my memory? She was familiar. I had been in touch with her, but now she was mad; I hadn't replied to her in quite a while. I searched my memory and remembered that yes, I had had sex with her, although the memory of it was dim. It was once, fairly recent and maybe only unremarkable. I peered intently at the message on the screen. There were also pictures that she herself had drawn and included: crudely made shapes, green and blue of the outside, grey or brown like logs or sticks. These were somehow cluttered around her words. She was unhappy she hadn't heard from me, I guess she thought I was an asshole and a jerk, but "whatever" ... she was moving on. This was a sense of things rather than the literal message because as much as I tried - and I was trying very hard to identify individual words - I couldn't quite read what she had written and ...
... looking up from the tablet I was outside regarding a vista of red buildings, stretching in a line in front of me to the right, set some distance away at the edge a precipice, all covered in snow. The buildings might have been constructed from the same red rock of Sedona, because that was their colour and the snow clung to the fronts of them in puffy white pouches. The sun had come up and reached across the precipice (and I remember now there are trees on the left, a dark and vaguely mysterious forest which gave shadow to the building fronts for most of the first part of the day). Now the sun has risen to where it's put the sides of the buildings in warmer light. I looked closer because something caught my eye. A disappearing act. A puff of snow that was there but then ... not there? I looked closer, looking at the shapes the snow made, looking to see if I could see the shapes change, but, no. Was it a trick of perspective? One puff of snow in front of another puff of snow so that when I moved the angle between the two of them made the space suddenly appear?
Nothing changed as I watched.
Then suddenly, extraordinarily, like a great event missing only a chorus of angels, all the sun-lit snow melted from the red stone buildings. They disappeared ... not so much as clouds of steam, more like the barely visible waves of the heat mirages that collect on the surface of distant asphalt. The buildings shook with the energy of the collapsing snow and from these thermoplasmic waves. I watched the buildings tremble as the snow fell and then evaporated from their facades. And still they shook. There was someone next to me and I said, "That must be scary inside, almost like an earthquake." The person replied, "No. Actually, you don't even notice it."
The dream shifted and I was inside a professional sports arena, somewhere new where I'd bought tickets for a game, some sport I'd never seen before. Not basketball, not hockey. I can't remember what now.
I was alone.
The arena was beautiful, a modern marvel full of light and glass and rich with colours in the air. Over the PA came a woman's voice that carried a message for the person in Section L please return to Gate 9 to sign for your ticket and I clearly understood it was for me. I'd not signed my credit card receipt. (I remembered that I'd forgot.) Perhaps I'd also left my MasterCard there. My seat was in Section L at the end of the arena, just past the curve and I had a look through the wide arch through to Section L, impressed with the location. The seats were grey and modern and comfortable-looking and mostly empty; all the people were still milling about through the concourse. I proceeded to find the way out and back to the ticket window. I walked through bright white, along moving walkways, through high, curving arches. It was beautiful. I never quite had the sense of being lost or panicked or frustrated about not being able to find the exit. I just kept moving through the arena.
And I did find the way out. I went through an industrial door and found myself in an airlock of a loading bay. I went down a couple of concrete steps and looked back to where there was a beautiful girl with long blonde hair in a very pretty dress standing behind the rail. I resolved to tell her how pretty she was even though she was very young indeed, maybe only a teenager (17? 18? 19 maybe?), but the air was alive with possibility. She would have sex with me if I pressed my advantage. She was looking past my shoulder and so I turned and saw the second woman, also smartly dressed, much older than either of us, her face rounder, plain and aged. I realized this was the girl's mother. I turned my back, abandoning the daughter and walked past the mother, continuing my trek to the ticket window. I pushed open the bay doors and went out into sunlight.
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