Last night I had this dream I was in Montreal.

It was snowing - wet and sloppy - and there were people everywhere out in the streets and on the corners.

On what dreamily resembled the corner of Villeneuve and Jeanne Mance there was a little American-style diner that seemed to have a hip scene gravitating to it, and I decided to drop in.

I felt somewhat self-conscious and out of sorts, and I wasn't sure whom exactly I was going to visit up in the old neigbhurhood. I ordered a cheeseburger from the counterman.
"Fallen on hard times have you?" He asked me, as he began to set up the burger on a stainless steel grill.
"No." I replied. "I just like cheeseburgers.

I was trying to remember if anyone I knew still lived at my old apartment at 5969 Park ave. I was having strange visions - as if from previous dreams - of a large additional apartment at the back of that flat, which Mike K. and I had never discovered.

I realized it was Vali I wanted to see, and so I set out again towards the Mile-End. As I stepped out of the greasy spoon, a black Volkswagen squareback passed by in the wet slush - fishtailing left and right.

Outside on the corner, as big wet snowflaes fell, a crowd was gathered as some incident had occurred. A little slow moving old lady was trying to throw rocks at someone else, and everyone laughed at the pair of them cruely and exagerratedly. At first her throws were impotent and off-mark, but then I heard one of the stones striking a body with some power. A few people in the crowd turned to me with gay smiles, and silently mouthed the words "OW"...

The scene changed and I was in a warm, unfurnished house with Hanford Woods. He was pulling on wrist-bands in preparation to go play soccer at the Redpath resevoir. The moment was fleetingly poingnant and precious to me, as it was lifted straight out of childhood's most irretrievable moments. Hanford complimented me on my writing, but I wished he would invite me to play soccer.

And then just as suddenly I was back in California on a beach. There was an enormous aircraft carrier anchored just beyond the surf. Hanford was there, set to begin his soccer game. he explained to me that I had to ride out to the ship in a little remote control dinghy. It wasn't so much a dinghy as an inflatable - but a big, red floppy amorphous raft with a powerful outboard motor.
As I set off towards the massive warship, I was barely clinging to the gunwales of the raft. A woman appeared in the water behind me swimming fast in a breast-stroke. To my disbelief, she overtook the motorized raft to which I was clinging.