En ese lugar de Humahuaca la unica sabia fue la vaca

Woken by my daughter calling me in the midst of a very involved dream, which I shall relate here. “Mama! There’s white in my window.” What…frost? It’s not that cold, is it? Oh, no. She means light.

We had gone to New York City, my husband and I, to be tourists. A friend offered to put us up and play tour guide (a dream self version of Elaine, who for whatever reason was a long time NYC resident). She met us at some kind of terminal (not sure whether it was airport, train or what) and took us to her apartment. We asked her for recommendations of what we should see. She said she would take us around tomorrow. But it’s Friday, I protested, don’t you have to work? Nah, she works ten hour days four days a week so she can always have three day weekends, she explains. But today, Thursday, she had picked us up mid-afternoon! Yeah, she took the afternoon off. Ok, then.

So we set off on Friday, and get separated somehow, but meet at this restaurant (glass fronted on two sides, in a triangular building between wedge streets. Yes, this is so B.A. There were even white tablecloths on every table and those plastic bread baskets with grisini in them). Kurt was sitting at the table with a green bottle of soda (that is, the carbonated water, not coke. What do you call it in english…tonic water?), munching bread and we came over and started to pull out chairs, but instead of letting us sit he jumped up and said we should leave. A waiter in a white jacket started to come toward the table. I was confused. Weren’t we meant to eat here? Isn’t this the place Elaine recommended? Kurt ushered us out saying it was best we not stay.

At this point, I’m raving about how beautiful New York is. Oh, look at the cobblestone street. Oh look at that 172 bus, yellow and blue, and old Mercedes Benz make. Just like Buenos Aires! I wish I had come here sooner, I say. I had no idea it would be so beautiful! And so on.

Then Elaine took us to the entrance of this museum. She told us she thought we would enjoy it and left us. It was completely deserted. We came to the entrance where a man was sitting at a small table with the guest book. We signed in. I remember being unclear on whether there was a fee or not. We didn’t pay anything, so apparently not. It was a weird sort of museum. Huge rooms with very little in them, and arranged as part of the room, not in display cases and no plaques explaining anything. It felt like a school building, maybe a university. Lots of large windows and rooms big enough to be classrooms (or hallways or atriums) with antique chairs and desks in them. Then suddenly these africans show up, looking for some runaway prince or leader or something like this. They shut the doors of the museum and start badgering the receptionist (who is suddenly black american, though I don’t think he was that way to start out. In fact, I think he may have been a woman starting out). He turns the refugee over to the guard, and explains he is giving the man up because these mercenaries who have come for the prince or whatever have killed the museum guy’s security escort. Something like a dozen guys or more had been killed. He demonstrated this by pointing to a large red woven basket and saying “As many of my brothers who would fit in there were murdered”.

The soldiers take both of the guys away and lock the museum up, turning everything off. Kurt and I are alone inside. We don’t turn on the lights, but Kurt goes over to the thermostat and turns the ac back on. We’re glad to be able to go through the place alone and at our leisure. We come to this set of stairs, blocked off by a double row of wooden chairs. One row faces us, and one row faces away, toward the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs is a reading room of the New York public libary. I tell Kurt that’s the only reasearch quality public library in the world (I think I must have meant the U.S., but whatever). It’s cool, but I don’t want to go there, because I’ve already been, the last time I was in New York. In the dream, I’m not sure why the museum and the library are attached. I’m also not sure how the chairs are supposed to prevent people going back and forth between, but they are not only keeping us from going down there, they are keeping the people in the library from even seeing us. So however flimsy, it seems to be working.

Then voices. We have been discovered. I hide in the leg portion of an upright piano while Kurt is interrogated about Mr. and Mrs. Schwind. He pretends not to know what they are talking about, and is very convincing, but I am seen hiding behind the piano and we must leave the museum.