The cold is here. Rain and snow alternating today. CatGreta, who spends her days outdoors, is perplexed. Wanting out, rushing back in, wanting out again. This would be a good day to bake cow cookies, now that I have a stove, if only I had chocolate chips. I'll have to get some when I go out to mail my book orders.

Oh! here's the sun, and even though it still isn't 40F degrees Greta is OUT, and peacefully ensconced in the vacant-lot weed field near her favorite ground squirrel burrow. I suppose "peacefully" isn't the right word ... "Alertly," then.

Halloween came and went. I carved two big pumpkins. BrotherBrian was a vampire, as he is every year since I bought him rubber vampire teeth he has no other excuse to wear. I made up his face with the pointy eyebrows and hairline and the pallor and the bloody mouth. All evening every few minutes he trotted off to the bathroom mirror to admire himself and I trotted outdoors to watch my jack-o'-lanterns glow in the dark. We had five trick-or-treaters, including the neighbor kids (three) and a pair of sisters aged maybe 7 and 9 dressed as a fairy princess and a Greek goddess, respectively. I suppose no one wants to walk all the way down an empty vacant-lot-lined street just to get to the one little house at the end of it. Plus it was raining.

***

I dreamed this morning of Charles Olson. That is, the dream was not about Charles Olson, but rather he was in the dream, toward the end of it. I had moved to a cheap ugly flatroofed house off the beaten track. It was brown. Looked as though it had been cobbled together from old paneling. But it was roomy, three bedrooms, three baths. Sort of dim. And trashy. It was on low ground by itself next to a cornfield, directly behind a high hill that shielded it from a busy highway. I lived there with my brother. In real life here in town there is a violent little man who wanders about in camo clothes raving about conspiracies and survival. I know his mother, who never has been strong enough to get him to leave home. He used to visit my bookstore and harangue me there for hours. This little man was a character in my dream. I let him stay in my house in a back bedroom of his own. I worried a little about my friends thinking that I always bring home crazy people. Thinking I'd done it again, and getting discouraged with me. The house was full of people for some reason, visiting because of some occasion. Crashing there because it was near the college and it was free. One of the overnighters was Charles Olson. I was in awe of him, afraid to speak to him. He strode about the place being large, ashes dropping from his everpresent cigarette, pontificating to his young male minions, who followed him around like so many pilot fish. He was preparing a manuscript. He needed to make copies of it. I had a small copier and offered to make the copies for him, but he preferred to use his own, a large and complicated machine I was unfamiliar with. As he placed the first page of his manuscript under its lid he was called away. He told me to finish the job and then rushed out of the room, in too much of a hurry to explain to me how his copier worked or to hear my stammered questions. I went to the machine, which was engaged in slowly scanning the page. The buttons were numerous and tiny and placed closely together. I carefully lowered the tip of my right pinky finger onto what I thought was the correct button - "start," perhaps - but instead it depressed the button next to it, weirdly labeled "wash." To my horror I saw little jets along the length of the copier glass issue sudsy water under the lid, drenching and removing the type from the page. I fumbled desperately trying to find some button that would reverse the process. Olson turned up then and was, yes, angry with me. I tried to explain my mistake, said I couldn't find a way to make it stop. "You turn it OFF," he replied. He never looked me in the eye, so disgusted was he, and he grabbed his papers and bolted from the room. There was more to the dream. In one bathroom the doors sealed tightly, and one filled the entire room with water in order to bathe. I was upset because a man had drained it before I could use the bathwater; refilling it was time-consuming, and who knew when there would be more hot water? The house had a narrow hallway that was crowded with academics moving quickly back and forth as they got ready for their symposium. My bedroom was off this hallway and wide open to it, having a wide space where double doors were meant to close but missing the doors. I tried to pull a scrap of curtain across the gap, but it was far too small and my room remained exposed to everyone.