I was sitting quietly with my Aunt Mae in her apartment on G Street, and was just getting ready to go. As I stood up I realized that I was dreaming and that my aunt had actually been dead for many years. I turned and looked at her, and she was smiling ever so gently - she knew what I was thinking, and I knew she was there as a guide and a friend. I glanced over at her dining room table and noticed a bowl of unusually bright oranges. I awoke, ruminated for awhile, and went back to sleep.

Next thing I knew I was bombing down a two-lane desert highway with two strangers in an old blue sedan - late sixties Chevy, I think. I was making out in the back seat with this very cute blonde guy, who was oddly familiar - in between gropes we were joking around with the driver, a swarthy fellow in his early thirties with thinning hair.

We stopped at this funky motel, and while the driver checked in, the blonde and I took the key and went to the room. It was blue, and pretty much what you'd expect from a roadside motel in the middle of nowhere - except that in the back, where the bathroom should have been, there was an alcove with a very bright bowl of oranges sitting on a little table. I woke up again. "So what's with the oranges?" I thought. "And who were those people? Hmm." I went back to sleep again.

I found myself then at the family home of my friend Olivier, somewhere in the French countryside. His father led Olivier and I through the house and out the back door, where there was an orange tree hanging over a fence from a neighbor's yard. His father snapped off a piece of fruit. "These are the sweetest oranges I have ever tasted," he said in French, peeling off the skin. "Mmmm. C'est delicieux."

Once more I awoke and lay awhile thinking. I got out of bed and went to the kitchen - I was staying at my parent's house, and no one was home but me. It was after nine. My father had been out already, met with a friend to shoot a bucket of balls, come back to the house, and left again to go shopping with my mom.

On the kitchen counter sat the gift my father's friend had brought him that very morning: fresh picked oranges from his own tree.

After my coronary, I got dressed, walked down to the river, and had a delightful meditation.