A train is driving down the tracks, and along side run a few horses. Cheesy music plays which talks about the horses and the train, in a musical style that only Parker & Stone would enjoy. It follows from a storyline about the trains, or maybe a band, and something old.

I play guitar. I'm playing as though I am performing, though I am just playing for myself. I'm sad about not playing more often, and feel rusty. I'm trying to prove to myself that I still have the skill, though I'm not sure.

I start to play something famous, some REM or something, and get into it. I'm trying to keep the speed up without losing any accuracy. It's tough. Someone comes and starts listening, and we sing along, and do remarkably well for the different sections - the chorus, verses, and even a solid bridge that really bangs it home. I'm aware that despite this my playing is sloppier than I'd like.

--

A class I am taking. It is a somewhat informal thing, but I am very into it. Something like a community center or vipassana center class. None of the self-importance of a university.

I am in a city, and have a destination, with my father. The travel involves subways, and going places like the airport. There are attractions, like museums. The destination becomes something which is abstracted and ideal, and the distances grow longer. We are now outdoors, and the city has fallen away. Sylvia is there, we have lunches. I have come down off a large plateau, and with much recent success become happy and confident. Sylvia is less so, and she offers me food from what she has managed to collect: a few sandwiches, one with sausage, the others vegetarian. As a thank you or congratulation to me, she offers me a sandwich, but then reserves for herself the choicest ones. I'm alright with this, and take the sausage sandwich.

The surroundings are beautiful, with trees and leaves, the sloping plateau, which cascades down into the lower reaches.

I am back in the city. I am with three people, and it becomes a game of deciding which among us would hook up with the others. As we walk, we slowly separate into pairs, and we make fun of the possible connections between us and imagine the behavior of each possible pair-off.

Back outside, museums, places. With my dad. Returning to the plateau. As we walk past a museum, we see a large strange structure outside. It is something like an observatory, but has an old marble structure. There are two large protrusions coming out from the front, each supported by large buttresses. As we get closer, we see there are kids using it as a slide. They slide down with large chunks of marble in hand and throw them out at the bottom, as a game. It seems dangerous, sliding around with these pieces of rock or concrete that look to weigh at least 100 pounds. Even worse, the kids can't lift them themselves, so someone helps them drop into the chute with them. But they seem to be having a good time.

I travel by bike to a far away place, somewhere deep in VT or NY, northern New England, for a reunion. It is taking place at a particular house that is fairly remote, in the woods. I am expecting most of the people there to be people I don't know, maybe one or two familiar faces, but the rest people from other years or other projects than the one I participated in. I arrive earlier than most, and walk up the driveway, by habit walking on top of a wall (made of rock and what looks like skulls). I jump around a tree, and come to the door. I knock. One person is inside, I greet her, and we chat a bit. Food is prepared, and we wait for others to arrive.

Some time later, after the reunion, I depart, heading home. Perhaps foolishly, I plan to bike the whole way home in one day. It is a sunny day, and I pass through town and city with ease, as though the road were perpetually slightly down hill. There is always water on my left side -- I'm not sure if it is coast or just a large river, though I am traveling east. I come to a major town (one of two I pass through in this day-or-two long journey). But here, I become confused about the route -- it seems the road I am on is becoming a freeway, and there is little or nothing I can do about it. I am being forced onto a major interstate. It looks like there is a sidewalk, and it looks like we are headed for a bridge.

In a conference room. I am getting ready for a speech. Barack Obama has tapped me to be in a high level cabinet position. I am strangely unprepared and quite surprised at this unexpected nomination. I am one of about a dozen or so people to have been nominated who was speaking today in a press conference format to introduce themselves.

I'm confused about what the position I'm nominated for is. The white board listing names has "Secretary of State" next to my name. But I can't believe that I could possibly be named for something as politically important as that. I assume, correctly, that this just means I will be reporting directly to the Secretary of State, as one of possibly many #2's. I confirm this with Obama. I ask him what I should talk about at this speech here, and he tells me, "You should say why you're the right person for this job." Why am I, I ask? "Because you will bring a perspective to this that noone else could. With your background in activism, your youth, and your ideals." It's very good, it's better than I would have come up with for myself. I start trying to prepare in more detail what I'm going to say, which becomes tough because I am having trouble findings omething to write on. Finally I do find a pen and paper, and as I start to jot some words down, Barack expresses great interest in seeing what I write, understanding that I am likely to be taking notes on what I will say. I write, and the letters come out in a dense cursive, and the ink on the pen blends together on the very porous paper, making the words illegible. I try to find another piece of paper, and start going through a couple of notebooks, both of which I have filled. I find another piece of paper in the form of a long roll like butcher paper, but 5 inches wide. I wrap a long piece around my hand to get to just the part I can write on. The meeting is starting very soon, and I'm not talking first, but I need to get my thoughts down very soon, or just wing it.

Finally I start writing, planning things like "I'm very grateful to be here today, and deeply honored by this nomination," etc. As I do this I start to realize that taking this job will completely change my plans of finishing at MIT and working out in the desert and all of this sort of stuff. I wonder if that's OK.

I'm augmenting my lunch with a free donut. There are a few boxes of baked goods side by side, one of which contained donuts. But now, when I start to sift through the boxes to find what I am after (a large donut with chocolate glaze, and perhaps some filling) I don't find it -- all I find is every other type of pastry ever made, but which doesn't quite satisfy my craving.

Late for catching a train. I'm supposed to be there "now", and I'm not there, and still have things to gather. Can I make it?

An airplane is flying overhead, flying low, and turning sharply and uncontrollably. It is a passenger jet, not meant to do this sort of thing. It looks like it might crash soon. We are down town, a large city. The plane starts diving, it's hard to tell where it's going, but I yell to people to try to run the other way. We hear it scream down to the ground and crash with a giant rumble, minor earth quake, and explosion. A fireball rockets up to the sky. Now we run towards the plane, to try to help with rescue.

I'm not sure, and the situation is far too chaotic to tell, but my sister and aunt were both on a plane that was to arrive at this city at around the time this plane crashed. I worry that they were on this plane. Now my family is here, my mom and dad are here. We are trying to figure out how to deal with this situation. I have also lost my clothing... my orange fleece jacket is missing, as are my shoes. I finally find the sandals, but the fleece jacket I seem to have lost somewhere. I return to a classroom where I had been earlier, and find not the fleece jacket, but the windbreaker -- it turns out the windbreaker I was wearing was not mine but a different one I had collected accidentally. I swap them.

--

Statistical plotting.

SQL queries. Writing and following through all kinds of queries. Trying to get complex responses from a db.

--

I am walking down a canyon, it is remote, but this section is town, and even urban. And a gangster I pass pulls out a gun, fires a warning shot and tells me to get out of there. I run, and encounter my family and a whole bunch of friends who are all sitting around in a large group out on the street. I run to the back of them, and as I do, yell at them that someone with a gun is chasing me and asking them to call 911. I am fearful, and also intentionally seeking protection between a large crowd of bodies, equally vulnerable. I wonder if this is ok, or if this is evil.

Hiking and returning to a central little collection of houses. We are remote here. Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot" becomes a song that I am going over in an acoustic version. Of course the high part in the vocals is way too high for my voice. I try to figure out how I can sing it anyway.

I discover a new method for election verification. Basically, each person is handed a random key, which they can use to vote. This random key becomes the key to a hashmap. If they use the wrong key, they override someone else's vote, but it's a random vote, so they have no idea whether they are overriding someone voting like or unlike them. I realize at the time that there is a chance this has conceptual flaws, but it seems sound to me.

--

A place that is vertically divided (an upstairs-like space and downstairs-like). I live in one or both of the spaces, and must travel between them for work. Many interactions with people that are based around an object or more. Obligations and time schedules.

I am trying to find some food. I am in a suburban town. I walk through one store to get to a store in the back that supposedly sells food. The rear store is a combination Barnes & Noble and some kind of greasy fast food shop. But the store is supposed to be closed, and they just forgot to lock the back door. The employees are in the process of closing down the store, cleaning up, clearing the registers, etc. I encounter the manager on duty, who, it turns out, is one of the managers from my days as an employee at the Berkeley branch. He recognizes me, too -- which I find somewhat disconcerting. I explain to him that I was just after food, and he says that's alright, even though they are closed, they can accommodate me. I'm surprised by the hospitality, it is quite out of character for the institution.

--

Data sifting, like powerlines stretching across the desert.