From a second-floor balcony, I hear a sneeze that sounds forced and theatrical, followed by a friendly hello. I know instantly it’s Brian because he’s called out “Good morning!” to me from this vantage point before. I’m sure he mistakes my friendliness for flirting, as I often run into him on his walks to work. I look up and say hi back instead of “bless you.”

He says, “What are you listening to, and why can I hear it?”

I apologize, even though I know it’s low enough not to carry that far. Gigi chewed up one of my AirPods.

I tell him it’s Neil Young.
“Never heard of him. But it’s nice.”
I want to say, How do you get to your thirties without knowing Neil Young? But I don’t want to extend the conversation, so instead it’s just, “Have a nice day!”

I admittedly don’t listen to Neil Young very much either. But last night, a song of his was in my dream. It played as if it were in the room with me. You know when sound enters your dream, and you wake up to it? Whether it’s your alarm, someone speaking, or something on a television?

I felt like I had to hear it again in my waking form.

In the dream, I was reviewing estate documents (because I see them too much in real life). Except this set of documents was wrapped in Happy Birthday paper with a confetti of primary colors: a worn-out blue that had been folded in a drawer for too long, red with the slight fading of sun exposure, yellow sharp and almost sticky in the way it stuck out.

I was at a restaurant that felt like a lost treasure from the nineties. Liminal. Overhead lamps. Amber tones. Vinyl seats that creaked when you moved. A buffet station long abandoned, the outline of it still etched in the tile.

I tucked myself in the corner, adjacent to some boisterous guests, and began unwrapping the document, peeling the birthday paper away carefully as if it mattered how I opened it. The Neil Young song was playing through the speakers, filling the space. And I remember real-me thinking, How am I hearing this so well? I couldn’t focus on a single word on the document because I felt so enamored with the song.

I don’t know how the dream ended (do any of us ever get to see our ending?). But by the time I finish rounding a corner with the song and Gigi (Brian’s screen-covered weirdness behind us), I lower the volume and repeat a lyric to myself, marveling at it and the feeling of the morning air.

_{^{(Daily Writing 101)}}