I dreamt that I was reading at Powell’s Books – but there was a bar there – to my left from the podium – and a band too, apparently in case I wasn’t quite entertaining enough. I stood at the center of all of that, with about a hundred people in front of me (go brain!). All of them were talking, and seemingly my book had been printed in messy, overly-corrected ballpoint pen on wet toilet paper. I held a mush of it there in my hand and tried to separate out a few consecutive sheets in order to try to piece together a story-line, any story at all. I tried a few times, starting off with gusto on some sentence that ended in a messy blurred blotch. Then I would start all over again.

This was a real enough dream that at some point my dream brain had obviously had enough and to said to hell with it, bailing me out into wakefulness, and I sat there in that departing dream state, heart palpitating, trying to figure out if maybe I could try to just improvise a little of the book? Did I know any songs I could sing? Would someone bring me a beer at least?

I was incredibly relieved to remember that I will be reading from a real book, with a binding! not printed on toilet paper!

I did a quick search on reading nightmares to see if this was, you know, some sort of common pre-book-release epidemic that all first-time authors experienced and came up with the poet Matthew Guenette’s reading nightmare. My favorite part: Instead of his book being switched out for a mush of toilet paper, he held in his hand ‘a set of visual “instructions” for how to change a muffler’.

Brains. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

I wish people told me their dreams every day – sort of like that old hippy book, The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You. It didn’t hurt that in my friend David’s dream, I’d just inherited 400 million dollars. Apparently he was a bit confused why I refused to change my life very much. Phh. In your dreams, man!

I definitely need an official category for 400 million dollars.