On the weekend I stood in the library with a cup of coffee and watched you swimming in the pool in a red one-piece, back and forth, unaware of me, a soft smile on your face. The pool was a drag to build but this makes it worth it and today, stuck in traffic, I think, god, or mathematics or whoever, let me be a ghost afterwards. Let me haunt you like this and see you happy, unobserved, that is all I ask.

I have been discussing the subject of lucid dreaming with a number of friends recently, independently of one another; the subject just comes up somehow. The more I think about lucid dreaming, the less I see the point; my theory of dreaming is that it is the subconscious, or the body, or whatever, communicating to the conscious, or simply the subconscious thinking, or whatever, and it might not be good to tinker with that; I would rather spend the effort on understanding it better. It being dreaming, not lucid dreaming.

Another problem of lucid dreaming that any lucid dreamer would face is how to know when one is dreaming. It seems easy afterwards, to realize you had been dreaming, but in the thick of it it is not always so obvious.

Partly this is because dreams can be so prosaic, and life can be so surreal. So there are various tests, such as jumping (if you are dreaming, you might fly, if you are not dreaming, probably not); or spinning around – if you look away in a dream, and then back, things change. If you do it in real life, they generally don’t.

Only recently, I found myself chatting (I thought) with a friend pretending to be a Nigerian hacker who had hacked her account, but it turned out to be a real Nigerian hacker who had hacked her account for real. Later that day, late at night in fact, I went to the airport to pick someone up only they missed their flight (on my watch!) and I had to arrange a new one for them and managed to do so despite the fact that the ticket counter was closed and such things are not my specialty. This was surreal enough for me; when I returned to my car I waited for an elevator in the garage, and two models were also waiting, speaking Russian, in short hot pants and red fezzes.

All totally normal things, but odder than most of my dreams, at least the ones I recall.

My brother, his ten-year-old son and I visited Beta at work, and then took a stroll around a nearby park. My brother had his camera, a fat digital SLR, and I had a new digital camera he brought over for me. We walked around and took pictures of stuff.

I saw various people I knew and pointed them out to my brother. I saw a violinist from my orchestra. I would have said hi, but she was playing beach volleyball and I didn’t want to bother her, so I just watched for a while.

Then my nephew saw a playground and disappeared into the climbing equipment.

My brother and I wandered around among the playing children, two middle-aged men with cameras.

“This doesn’t look good,” my brother said.

We casually strolled away and took a seat at a table outside a cafe. At some point we ate dinner, and gave Beta a ride home.

Gamma: Hi, dad.
Mig: Hi. Everything okay? Having fun?
Gamma: Yep. We went swimming at the pool.
Mig: No emergencies?
Gamma: Nope. Well, except for almost bleeding to death.
Mig: Ah.
Gamma: I fell down at the pool and cut my knee and skinned my shin and blood was running down my leg! And then it mixed with the water and was all over the place!
Mig: But you’re okay now?
Gamma: Yep. Gotta go. Bye!
Mig: Tata.

That was in the evening. She traces an arc during the day. Last night she called, crying again, because there was a thunderstorm and she was scared and homesick. This morning she called my wife and was her old perky self.

Gamma: Hello?
Mig: Hi there. You called me earlier?
Gamma: You on your lunch break?
Mig: I was. I was in the basement so I missed your call. What’s up? Everything okay?
Gamma: Fine. We’re going swimming. Lunch was good. Hang on a minute. Two seconds. Don’t hang up. [whispering] Can I tell him? Okay? Oh, dad?
Mig: Yes, honey?
Gamma: A boy who slept in my circus wagon in the group before us had lice so they’re checking us. I might have lice.
Mig: …
Mig: Okay, honey.
Gamma: You can comb them out, right? So no big deal?
Mig: No big deal. They comb right out. Have fun swimming.
Gamma: There’s a public pool right next to the camp.
Mig: I saw it when we dropped you off. It looked very inviting. Have fun! Gotta go!
Gamma: Me too. Bye!

On the weekend Gamma went to camp. It is located in a picturesque area of the country about an hour and a half north of here between the prison and the high-security mental hospital for the criminally insane.

Actually, I was just kidding about the location. It is in a nice area, but there are castles etc., and no hospitals or prisons. There might be, but I didn’t see any.

You never know.

She will sleep in a circus wagon with other girls. There are two dozen kids in all, and they have circus tents as well and will learn to juggle and ride unicycles.

The day after she was dropped off, she called us in the afternoon (we gave her a mobile phone to call us in emergencies or when she got homesick) to tell us they couldn’t go swimming in the nearby river because everything was burning down, and also their wagon had been burglarized and although she lost nothing a mobile phone was stolen from someone else.

But the fire department was on its way as were the police.

Later, she called to say they had gone swimming after all after the fire was extinguished and had eaten sausages.

Alpha spoke to the folks who run the camp and they said it was not arson, someone had a bonfire nearby and sparks had set bushes on fire and they put it out before the fire truck got there.

Later in the evening she called us to say everything was okay and she was homesick, a little.

At night Gamma called us again, begging, screaming and crying at us to come immediately and bring her home because they had seen a strange man sneaking around their circus wagon. This was at about 11 at night. Also they had eaten risotto for dinner. And she had learned a little unicycle riding. But would probably juggle scarves in the show on Friday.

I called her back a few minutes later and the teachers were inspecting the circus camp and she was with them. She was much calmer. She gave the phone to the teacher and he tried very hard to calm me down. The kids have had an exciting day, he said, calmly. There was a fire and beep-beep-beep the phone went dead.

The phone went dead, I told my wife. I didn’t bother calling back. I imagined the kids all fine, snuggled in their beds, and the teacher simply walking with Gamma’s phone into a spot out of transmission range, and not, say, a crazy man with a bloody prosthetic hook.

This morning Gamma called to say she had slept well, and would work on unicycle again today.