Last night I dreamt that I had acquired – I had not purchased, but I had taken legal ownership of, as though it were an inheritance or a prize – an amazingly, stupendously fast late-1960′s convertible American car.  It looked a lot like, say, a late ’60s Cutlass Supreme, though the one linked there isn’t a convertible and is the wrong shade; the one in my dream was a faded black or very, very dark grey, with some orange-red and white on it in various places.

I had to go far into the desert to pick it up, where it had been stored, and there was some condition of my getting it that I had to store it in the same place.  I remember thinking it would be a pain to park it in Arizona, but totally worth it.  I had gone to pick it up and learned that it was not just souped up, its speed reached into the realm of science-fiction.  It had a steering wheel that could stretch out to forty or fifty feet, and I had to drive it wearing roller skates and strap my hands to the wheel so that when I over-accelerated and it threw me out the back of the car I could land on my skates and cling to the wheel – far behind the body of the car itself – and steer long enough to reel myself back in.

Driving down the interstate to bring it back home, I passed through an area hit by a hurricane and suffering terrible flash floods.  As water poured onto the road I saw the cars ahead of me braking.  I braked, as well, learning that the brakes were as unnaturally capable as the engine; I stopped on a dime, going from hundreds of miles per hour to a dead stop in a matter of feet.  (This had the advantage of propelling me forwards, back into the driver’s seat.)  I wondered if the cars behind us would stop in time and saw that some did, but others didn’t, rear-ending those immediately behind me.  A pile-up started to form in terrible slow-motion, and I wondered if the cars were just going to keep running up on top of each other like that, building a mountain of wreckage so high it would topple forward onto the rest of us.  It occured to me that I should get out of the road – by now I was standing in it, outside my car, skating around to get a better look at the on-going pile-up – and then it I wondered if I should move my car, too, and then whether I should simply drive it onto the median, hit the gas real hard and see if I could outrun both the pile-up and the hurricane.

When I awoke, Gogo was snuggled in between The Boyf and me, purring his head off, and Didi was curled up in The Boyf’s nightstand (yes, in, it’s complicated) and peeking at me with one eye.