I woke this morning from a dream in which Irene and I were hosting a huge party at our house. All the usual suspects were there, including people who’ve been to either the barbecues or daffodils parties we’ve hosted in real life, such as Karen Newton, Charlie Newton, Steven desJardins, Sandy Stewart, Risa Stewart, and others, plus many people who’ve never been at our home and whom I’ve only seen at conventions. That latter group was made up of BNFs, con runners, and the like, as opposed to professional writers and editors. The purpose of the party was to hold a book exchange, and each person brought a suitcase full of books, the contents of which were emptied out and piled together in the middle of the room.

At some point, I decided to give a tour of the wilderness outside our door, so we all piled in my Jeep—and yes, that’s all, as if I was driving some sort of impossibly full clown car—and went down the road to explore a nearby park. But it wasn’t the real-life 23,000 acre Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management Area we were trying to enter, but some other imaginary dream forest, and though my jeep did fine climbing over boulders and crossing streams, we eventually got to a part of the path where saplings had grown up to block our way.

This seemed strange, because by their size they had been growing for years, and I hadn’t remembered them being there before. In the back of my mind, I wondered whether deer-hunting season was yet over—after all, I didn’t want any of my guests shot! But then I realized that it had ended the day before. (In real life, the last day of the season was Saturday.) I thought of returning home to get a saw so we could clear the path and proceed, but I realized that we didn’t have time for that. We were going to have to find a different way to get in if we wanted to explore.

So we backed out in search of another entrance to this wilderness, and as we did, it became less a wild area in the middle of the country, and more a tamed park in the center of a city, something like Central Park. And I was no longer the one driving. Instead, Bob Howe was at the wheel, Resa Nelson was to his right in the front passenger seat, I was in the back seat behind Resa, and to my left was Liz Lemon, the actual character from the TV show 30 Rock, as opposed to Tina Fey, the human being. I had no idea where all of my other guests had gone, but it didn’t seem odd to me that I was now driving around with only these three. Liz was embarrassed about something, and scrunched up her face, and then her body as well so that we couldn’t even see her face.

While Bob drove, attempting to circumnavigate the park through the streets of the megalopolis which surrounded it, park on the left, city on the right, we discussed art museums, and I mentioned a show of surrealist art which I had recently seen during my last visit to New York. We also discussed a current show at the Brooklyn Museum, but Bob warned that it would cost $9.99 to get in. I said that didn’t seem like too steep a price to pay to see paintings which were worth 80 gazillion dollars. (That was the actual price I mentioned. And as far as I know, neither of these mentioned exhibits exists in real life, only in my dream) Bob and I were having this exchange for awhile, with him looking back over his shoulder the whole time, ignoring the road. Resa warned him to watch where he was going, but Bob only laughed, and kept looking back at me.

We were actually already in a museum, he told us, and the car wasn’t really moving at all, even though we had the illusion that it was. Everything we saw, everything we thought was real, was merely being projected onto the windows of the car. Once he told us this, the images changed. Instead of reflecting an actual, iconic, ideal city, we began to see wild Dali-like imagery—strange colors, melting buildings, the road ahead curving crazily like a twisted ribbon, and so on. We all enjoyed the show for awhile (except for Liz Lemon, who remained hunched over, trying to keep herself as inconspicuous as possible), and then, before it was over, I woke.