I dreamed, last night, that I was trying to run some sort of poetry class in an ancient dark filthy kitchen that somewhat resembled the one in my grandparents' mountain farmhouse. But as in Through the Looking-Glass, every time I tried to concentrate on whoever was sitting in the shadowy edges of the room, those images would slide away from me. I turned and turned, trying to invent writing prompts on the fly, trying to figure out who was in the room with me, and meanwhile strange dusty grease-ridden implements trembled in the low rafters, and the air was a brown haze, like someone had been frying hamburgers for 50 years without ever opening a window.

I woke up, as the old books say, hag-ridden. The ghosts have risen, revealing my little sphere of influence as a bauble and a fraud.

I know this dream will wear off. But it was unsettling--to be conquered, after so many years, by the dirt and inertia of my own past.