“I’m the one who should drive,” I shout but she stares straight ahead. My eyes grow dim as the road passes.

“You have no right to take my car,” I say.

“Oh, is that so?” she laughs over the roar of the engine. “What are your few years of wisdom compared to my thousands? ”

I grab her belt but it burns my hand.

“Hey, you better put the seatbelt on,” she says. “You’re in for one helluva ride…”

Her laughter peals over my head as she drives by a graffitied church. “Do you know where your soul is?” Uncle Sam asks, aiming a painted finger at me. The writing on the wall fades as we race past twisted fig trees, towards a cliff. Flames lick the wheels. I grab my soul, hold down her arms, struggle to control the steering wheel. She spits at me.

“Since when does a soul spit?” I ask.

“When a body doesn’t listen,” she says and slaps me. “Wake up for Heaven’s sake! Those gates won’t stay open forever.”

I dig my nails into her hands but she laughs.

“Slow down! I can’t think,” I shout.

“You think too much,” she says.

“Take me home,” I beg, arms now wrapped around her.

“How can I? You won’t let me.” She slams her foot on the accelerator, swerves to avoid an oncoming car and crashes into metal side rails.

I hear her moan as she lies skewered on a rosebush, shredded over thorns, hot pink jeans ripped, rhinestones crushed.

“I surrender,” I say. “I surrender.”

“It’s too late,” she whispers. “Now, you must travel the road alone.”

A fog descends and the rosebush vanishes.

“Madam Butterfly or Mary Jane’s Last Dance?” Juan asked.
“Most betters are going with Madam Butterfly but I don’t know…”
Dave looked down at his race sheet.
“…Remember Marshmallow Martini was favored in the last race–and he didn’t even place.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Damn everything starting with an ‘M’ is bringing us confusion,” I say.
“Shut up and let us think,” Juan answers.
They were right. I was a terrible gambler with no knowledge of the mathematics or madness dancing like pin balls inside the minds of the addicts. They were scientists of the sport, and I was merely an admirer of the beauty.
“You go get some fresh air buddy,” Juan says. “Let us think for the last minutes we have to place this bet.”
My shadow was hovering across his race sheet like a ghost. He was scared and so was I. This was the last of our money: five thousand pesos. This was our last chance and though I couldn’t contribute anything to their discussion I certainly didn’t want to be blamed for the outcome.
I walked outside over to get closer to the track. I wanted to get a good look at the horses as they waited to make it into the stadium.
Madam Butterfly was black and very masculine, not at all feminine like her name suggests. She kicked at the dirt with her long legs, picking up sand as her jockey patted her head and kicked his heel into her chest.
I tried to find number four, Mary Jane’s Last Dance. She was golden and fantastic. One of the finest horses I’ve ever seen. Her legs were nimble and strong; longer than Madam Butterfly but looked much calmer, trotting slowly in little dance steps as her jockey smiled and spoke softly into her ear. Mary Jane’s Last Dance was worthy of earning her name, and I knew she was going to place.
I tried to find the two favorites. There was the number one horse, The Sky is the Limit off in the corner with his head down. He looked like a doctor just before surgery; complacent and confident in his capacity yet completely aware of what was required of him, not paying attention to any distractions. He was a brown stallion, and very large and it looked as if that horse was made to run like hell and do nothing else.
“Number two is going to start off strong,” Juan said. “But then he’ll be a goner and ‘il fall back at the end ‘cause he’ll have nothing left in the tank.”
Dave agreed.
“Hell yes,” he said. “The Sky’s the Limit will be spent by the time he reaches that final corner–and that short final straightway will be when Violent Storm gets into full gear and takes over the last couple lengths.”
“It’s designed for Violent Storm,” I said.
They looked at me like I was an idiot.
“What?” I said. “That short straightaway ending is designed for a horse named Violent Storm.”
“Please don’t talk,” Juan said.
I walked away to watch the horses enter the stadium. I always love it when they come out. There’s always a crazy one, with legs in the air, howling like a wolf.
“Errrrrrr,” bellowed Sugar Tequila in the corner. They were struggling to get her into the starting booth. The filly didn’t want to enter and her jockey was nearly knocked off her neck a few times. He was screaming at her, swearing in Spanish and sweating like a pig wrapped in bacon frying in the heat of the sun.
“Pinche pendejo chingona,” he said. “Vamanos–por favor Tequila–ahorita odale pues guey!”
They final got her inside and continued down the line at the starting gate. The Sky is the Limit was the next to enter. He did so with no hesitation at all; head bobbing back and forth slowly. I knew that colt was something special from the first time I laid eyes on him. Silver mane shining beneath the sweltering noonday Tijuana sun he danced leisurely onto the track. He was graceful and methodical and a vision to watch. Looking at the scoreboard the betting odds had her paying five for ten, and slightly favored over Violent Storm.
Madam Butterfly was paying thirty to one and Mary Jane’s Last Dance was thirty-seven to one. I didn’t know who we wanted, but I knew Mary Jane’s Last Dance was going to get it. I knew we would make a lot of money on the trifecta if we won. Winning: that’s all that mattered.
All the horses were in and ready to go. I looked back but couldn’t see Dave or Juan. Everybody was standing up and ready for the final race of the day. Almost all the money was on Violent Storm and The Sky is the Limit and rightly so. These two took off strong in the number one and two positions, inching ahead of the pack and then pulling further ahead after the first corner. They passed my position flying so fast it looked like their feet barely touched the dust.
There was no way anyone was going to catch them and The Sky is the Limit looked like he was pushing so hard he was trying to launch himself into space. But then his head started shaking lower to the ground and more violent. I was watching the jumbotron to get a better view and Violent Storm was making up ground fast as they made it around the final turn.
In the pack there were two horses fighting for third. They were trying to get ahead and both decided to go for the inside at the same time. The horses’ legs buckled in slow motion and “agggghhhh,” swept through the crowd like a broom rubbing across the faces of the patrons grabbing their mouths and chests.
An accident took down a couple horses, tossing anorexic jockeys through the air like rag dolls. They landed on the track and were immediately smacked like a piñata, horses somehow managing to continue as if their bodies were nothing but shadows.
The two favorites crossed the finish line and I didn’t even have a chance to see who won. The whole pack was fighting to place, five horses jockeying for one position on the platform. They crossed the finish line in a furious cloud of dust, whipping the horses with madness and hatred.
I sat back complacent and waited for the scoreboard. After a few seconds, number eight, Violent Storm, was posted in the highest position as the winner.
“Wooooooooo,” roared through the crowd.
“Yeeeaaaahhhhh,” I screamed.
Number two, flashed in red lights in the place spot right beneath number eight. The Sky is the Limit did it. They were right and I knew it would be awhile before the final number was posted. Everyone was waiting, frozen faces and no more shouting. A few women were laughing and a man drinking next to me tore up his ticket and threw it up into the air. His face looked sick and I had to turn away. I ran up the steps looking for my friends. We came to Mexico with twenty thousand pesos and this bet could double that if all went well.
“Come on Madam Butterfly sweetie–come on number seven–come on Madam Butterfly, come on girl…,” Dave said.
“Why is it taking so long?” Juan asked.
Juan wiped the sweat from his face. He was red like a lobster, sun burnt so bad he was glistening, looking quickly back and forth between the screen and the heavens like a demented lunatic. He was praying and pinching his cheeks, lips moving; saying nothing. Something had to happen.
Number 7 flashed across the screen in the place spot.
“Goddamnit,” Dave said.
“Ayyyyaaaaayyyyy,” Juan said, “Noooooooooo…”
Juan sunk back to his seat in silence. Dave pounded his chest like a gorilla. Now we had no money for tequila, only a little beer and tacos and weed. No heroin, only sunshine and senoritas and promises of better trifectas. I decided to brighten the mood and break the silence. This sadness is madness and we should have planed this trip better.
“Same old story–mañana, mañana, mañana–but I would have went with Mary Jane’s Last Dance.“

The dream is so vivid that I go downstairs to write it down. It is 5:30 a.m. As I am transcribing it I decide to call Hussein’s wife Farah, though I know that this is the name of the Shah’s wife. Or perhaps this was already her name in the dream. I can’t be sure anymore. In any case I am thinking of Farrah Fawcett. I call the camp Qui Vive after Jeb Stuart’s camp in winter ’61. The elevator comes from my old building in the Bronx. I don’t know what Hussein is doing in the dream. He looks very young and has his familiar mustache, though slightly thinner than in later years, and is probably wearing his red checkered keffiyeh. Condoleezza Rice is in the area talking to Olmert and Abu Mazen. Ehud is Ehud Barak. The road south is the road from French Hill to Ramot in Jerusalem, which actually runs along an east-west axis. I call it south because this seems a more appropriate direction for a retreat.

Dreams are a wonderful mystery. I rarely analyze them. I prefer to record them and leave the mystery intact. The dream transpires in an imaginary dimension of the world that can only be entered in sleep. If you attempt to resurrect this world in a waking state it loses its magic. If you imagine yourself acting in such a resurrected world you find that you have passed into the realm of fantasy, which has its own attractions but, paradoxically, none of the reality of the dream, for a dream, like a hallucination, is real on its own terms while a fantasy is merely willed. In a dream the world is given, and though we inhabit it as constructs of our own minds we act in it as we might act in the real world. Of course, when we are in a dream world we do not know that we are dreaming and there is nothing about this world to suggest that it is not real until we are awake. Were we not to awaken we might dwell there permanently, albeit on somewhat different terms, under a different kind of harmony, and live a life no less satisfactory, and perhaps more interesting, than our own.

Within the dream world everything proceeds with a certain logic and our minds operate along familiar lines: we think and feel just as we often do in the waking state – we reflect, we have insights, we engage in introspection, we are aware of belonging to ourselves, and we believe that we are freely exercising our wills when we are in fact being borne along. In this last sense, and again paradoxically, the dream is very much like life. In the real world too we are borne along, not by the forces that actuate our dreams but by the forces that rule our lives, though many would say they are identical. Say then that life is like a dream, not in its transience but in the way in which we are locked into ourselves and compelled to be what we are. In life we are the prisoners of ourselves just as we are the prisoners of our dreams.

The illusion of freedom lies at the heart of the human experience. We live with it as comfortably as the blind live without light. It is our condition. We know no other and are not equipped to know another. Consciousness does not make fine distinctions. It embraces the whole and calls everything within its sphere the self. It is in a sense coterminous with the self, inseparable from the self, and yet not the self, just as a mirror image is not the thing it reflects. When the mind has a thought consciousness is conscious of it and simultaneously throws it back on the mind as a datum of consciousness. Consciousness and the data of consciousness are coterminous too, so that when the mind conspires with itself to create an illusion, consciousness is deceived as well. The mind works behind a veil. It throws out thoughts from a dark place that come back to it in the purest light. If an image is tarnished it averts its eyes.

The mind protects us from ourselves. It stands guard over us in our waking hours just as it does in our sleep. It will not let us perceive ourselves as we are. It hides us from ourselves so well that we think that what we are is what we see. When we are moved to think a thought, want an orange or a woman, or perform for company we think we are free, for these urges, and even counterurges, are experienced as unmediated expressions of a will. In fact they only express habits of thought and social reflexes, all the unseen connections of the unconscious mind, and the imperatives of our nature. The will is the loudest voice. It reflects the balance of things behind the veil.

In the dream we slip behind the veil. Here too the world is given, but in the dream the world is my representation and as I enter it I am drawn further and further into myself. This is the final frontier. At each turn in the road a world vaster than all the universe opens itself to me. I am there. I think. I feel. Do I dare to step across the line and lose myself in the country of the dream? Do I dare to be free?

The road to Ramot, mirrored in my dream, is the road to such a country. What was going on there? Who were these people? What was this world of unexplored possibilities, opening doors I’d never imagined? And a war being fought and the enemy approaching and Denzel and Babcock and myself sorting out the chain of command and Queen Farah perhaps inviting me to tea and nothing holding true anymore. I see the camp now. It is full of activity, vehicles and men in constant motion. It must be winter because the ground is muddy. What will I find there? What lies beyond? It feels a little like my life.