I dreamed I was in college, majoring in genetics with my friend. We were sitting in class one day when my chair started going higher and higher, as if it was on the end of a pointer. The seat was white pleather and had no arms or really any way to stay in it without sliding out. There I was, pressing against the ceiling of the auditorium, trying to hang on so I wouldn’t fall to my death or at least to my not insignificant harm. My friend was behind me, but I couldn’t turn my head to say hey or help me or anything at all. The chair started swaying like a skyscraper in the wind. Change your major, a disembodied voice said sternly. Change it to sociology. That’s all you can handle. So I became a sociology major and was eased back down to earth. I never saw my future geneticist friend again.

I also dreamed the life partner and I were vacuuming up a bunch of dust at his parents’ house. The dust was in everything and was thick the way lint is when you don’t clean out the lint trap for a year. We breathed in so much dust our lungs were like those old-timey vacuum cleaner bags, so full air could no longer pass through.