But in that sleep, what comes?

It would be cheap to say all the anxiety was for nothing. As I was jilted from semi-sleep by touchdown aeroplane tires, the rush of air against perking wingflaps and a voice over the taxiing intercom, "Welcome to London Heathrow, the temperature is..." I hadn't time to not believe it. After the bleary-eyed aislemarch and birth into sterile terminal morning, I followed signs to where I needed to be and waited to be confirmed into the United Kingsom-- all scuttle and wait, hurry and queue. And behind a family of jabbering Middle-easterners with screaming children and no words for them I staggered through the airport wondering if my ears had yet to pop or if I'd become buried-- is it not possible to be crushed without drowning? Baggage claim. The long and joyless busride, comfort from The Beatles who seemed only appropriate. Arrival and rain and displacement and wondering how red the letter 'A' was glowing. American. American. I found a direction and plunged, squeezing past cherry Brits and scowling teenagers who whispered in un-English.

"'scuse me a minute, sir, if I may?"

I stopped and gave the Brit what attention my tired eyes would allow.

"'eah, I'm just come 'atta cou't, see, and they found me innocent-- because I am innocent, right, here look."

His prisoner ID badge.

"An' well I'm just lookin' to get a ride, need eight pounds fare, see, I was wond'rin' if you might help me out."

"I have nothing I can give you," I reply, lying, making halfhearted gestures at my pockets as if to indicate their emptiness.

"Right, then, thanks." And he's off in the other direction, leaving me as fortune might joke, at the very entrance of Gonville and Caius College. Here.

Line break.

Hey. Thanks for dropping in. It's somewhere around ten thirty here at jolly Cambridge and I am a hurricane survivor. So to speak, of course. It pretty much owns here. I've moved into a spacious and comfortable single room in the R tower of a magnificent gothic castle-building, vine trellis creeping up the front under watchkeeping gargoyles. These living quarters of mine are haunted, but my encounters thus far have been friendly. As a city Cambridge rages by night, ale-soaked "fuck off!"s bouncing between shopfronts, which tower over narrow stone streets, into open windows or dispersing with the owlhoots. There are more pubs here than I could have possibly imagined anywhere. It is a wonderland of pubs, I'm serious.

My fellows are perhaps the biggest sigh of relief. While we as a contingent are not without our extremes, the too-loud "pussy hunter" or the brooding nihilist, we have somehow come together in a strangely deliberate but welcome brother/sisterhood. With only a couple days to have gotten to know each other, I feel I can already identify some friends among this number-- even being not the most social myself (for a couple of reasons). Certainly, as the novelty of acquaintence wears and shit starts to get real, things will ebb and change as they do. You'll hear all about it, I promise. Right now I'm just relieved to be in accessible company. People seem okay with me, and I can definitely jam with that.

My day begins at about 6:30am. I get up, meditate, do some excercises, shower and read. Breakfast is at 8 in the fucking Great Hall: four long tables, family-style food that appears "magically" via tux-vested waitstaff, a head table and all the ornamentation you would expect of Hogridge University. Tuesday and Wednesday means 19th Century Lit of the City class at 9 where I have to pretend to have read Dickens' Bleak House and immediately following, at 11, we all meet up for coffee (served to us, again, by staff who act more as butlers than anything). Then I chill out for a little while, explore the city, or get some reading done. Or take a nap, like I did today, but more on that later. If it's Monday or Wednesday I have Ulysses class at 11:15, where I sit and scribble notes feverishly as my mind is flayed by the brilliant Professor R.M. (I don't want him googling this up!) I do my best to pipe up at least one comment he might consider "insightful" or "interesting" ("I feel by juxtaposing Odysseus and Bloom, Joyce is coming from a place of irony-- the 20 year vs. 1 day journey, the extraordinary man vs. ordinary everyman, you know..." Success!). Tea is at 4 and then Dinner at 6:30. BUT. The Buttery opens at 6. The Buttery is the on-campus pub, complete with the raddest bartender ever, who today told us how Cricket works. The Buttery stays open til 9 or 11 depending on the day, but by night the whole of Cambridge is our burrito. Before bed I'll read a little and meditate again, something I may even be making progress at. Then relaxation of muscles and sleep.

We haven't raged too hard yet, but last night went to a pub called "The Baron of Beef" and whiled away some time telling stories and talking about the poetry. I had just bought myself a Stella when someone tapped on my shoulder.

"Hey. Mike? Didn't you say something about meeting a convict on your way here?"

"Uh. Yeah?"

"Check this out, man."

A newspaper headline: "950 conviced murderers and rapists loosed in prisonbreak." Well, well!

Then last night I had a strange dream. I arrive back to wherever it was I was living at the time to a brown parchment envelope with the word "Poem" written across it. Underneath: "To: Michael Stringer" and my address. Inside the folded letter, or perhaps from somewhere within me, a voice reads "This will help with the body and with dreams." Five or six flaps each have under them a colored pill. I take the first in my hand and look at it, chalky and red. I put it in my mouth and a voice says, "water" so I wash it down. I pause now and consider the voice, a guide or guru invisible but there, and say to him as the thought occurs to me: "But maybe-- what if this is all just a dream?" A pause. I can feel the pill hit my belly. "Impossible," it whispers, "you have a lot to learn." Struck by this or something I spill the remaining pills and feel myself drifting from the dream as I scramble to pick them up and stuff them back into the envelope. "I can tell you still need to read some..." and the voice trails off as I'm jerked from sleep. I laid there for a moment just taking in the calm of 'reality' before springing up and writing the whole thing down, sure it was of some importance.

Then today, as I napped, I had another dream. I won't go into the whole thing here, as it was long and strange and somewhat... personal? I will say that it was the most vivid dream I have ever had. I got lucid almost immediately, thinking if I can fly and stay dreaming... oh man. And sure enough I did, and embarked on an adventure that involved not only my conscious control of myself, but of some environment as well. I could change the color of things, et cetera. I do worry a little, right now, that I've gone to some plane, some alternate life, and seriously fucked some stuff up. The near-end of the dream involved "me" sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, warning a "me" sitting in the back seat about something. Is there something up with my spacetime? The characters in the whole thing were tangible and dimensional and real. I'm still piecing things together, but I woke with no doubt that I'll return to that dreamspace. Maybe tonight. Maybe years from now.

Cambridge. This place is a trip.

Cheers.