light from the huge neon sign was of blinding proportions, and it threatened to sear my eyes. And the message the sign was conveying? It said in blinding red letters (I caught a glimpse of it before I closed my eyes and swerved out of the way of the oncoming obstruction) OPEN YOUR EYES—STOP LIVING THOSE LIES! After catching a fleeting image of the message, I ducked and the sign flew by me with a tremendous WHOOSH!, thus effectively blocking out the sugary sweet harmonic sounds of the harps. The sound of the sign flying by reminded me of the time I witnessed an Apollo moon shot—reminiscent of fifty 747's taking off simultaneously. In its wake the sign left an eerie silence, for the harps which had so effectively tranquilized me in this strange land had ceased to weave their magic. And alas! my fellow passenger on this unusual sojurn has vanished from my side, and was accompanying the neon sign through its apparently endless trek through this foreign place, a place that I was increasingly desirous to leave for the comfort of my own warm bed. At the same time, the message that the sign conveyed stuck in my head. I mean how could a bright sign which came floating through space with the phrase "OPEN YOUR EYES—STOP LIVING THOSE LIES" be visible to you when you had to close your eyes in response to the intensity of the red light it emitted? I suppose that there was some kind of heavy meaning in there someplace. In any event, the purple clouds upon which I had been floating were once again transformed into crisp white bed sheets, and I was back in my own warm bed. A fitful sleep then overtook me.

That was all last night, I think. This morning I awoke to the news that a lawyer in Pleasantville had murdered both of his kids, and then tried to commit suicide. And that a fireman in the Bronx had been hit in the neck with an old wine bottle somebody tossed at him while he was fighting a vacant tenement fire (the fire was labeled suspicious). Back to the real world, with all of its hostilities, hatreds, and horrors. Was it all my imagination, or did I really meet a woman named Sweet Honesty last night in a land called Truth and Beauty? I'll never tell. You see, I don't know if THAT was the dream . . . . or if we are living through a dream right now.

Albums

• New York City Community College Yearbook, 1978