I am in a dark, European style courtyard with an outdoor café on one side. There are cobblestones on the ground, & wrought iron balconies above with ivy hanging from them. The courtyard & the café & everything in them are immersed in such darkness that they look black.

I walk across the courtyard to the café & find my mother sitting at a table. She’s telling someone that’s sitting with her about the difference between how she drives drunk as compared to driving sober. Then she holds up a hand mirror & looks at it, & she looks upset, & as I circle behind her I see that the reflection is not her face at all, but that of an East Indian man. I have seen this before—I know what to do. Using our “powers of concentration,” together, we push that face off to one side, with slow difficulty, completely out of the mirror & off my mother’s true reflection, which then mirrors back at us normally, now that the East Indian face has gone. I explain to my mother that I’ve dealt with that problem before, & not to worry about it—the same face took my own face, in the same mirror, not long before. It won’t come back. The cafe is black & dark, & the courtyard is empty.

I leave my mother & go up a spiral stone staircase. As I go up I notice that I’m wearing 3, maybe 4, long black cloaks, one over the next. It gets even darker on the stairs but I can still see a little. I ascend two flights & stop on the second landing. I am waiting. I am waiting for two tiny fairies, the size of insects, to do something, but I’m not sure what. It gets suddenly darker & I know that it’s the fairy-creatures turning off the few remaining lights. In my mind’s eye I can see them: they are chewing & gnawing on the walls alongside the staircase, one flight below me. Maybe they have chewed through the walls to get at the electrical wiring—to kill the lights.

I am up there to find something, or to wait for the tiny fairies to find something. I’m not sure, but soon I grow impatient. The fairies are taking too long. I have to go. I descend the stairs. One flight down, I see them, but now they’ve transformed into two cats. Suddenly I know that because I waited too long to come back down, the fairies have become ‘wild’ again—become cats—but it means nothing to me.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs I stride back across the café & courtyard with a confident gait, long steps, my black cloaks flowing behind me super-goth style. Now there are cats on all the tables, & they scatter as I approach, & I feel important, & I make hissing & sputtering noises with my mouth as they dive from the tables as I pass. But then at the far side of the courtyard I turn around, & I see my own cat, from home, mixed up in the bunch. I’m glad to see her. I go back & pet her head & scratch her neck & tell her she looks good, & she purrs.