Last night I dreamed of visiting Manhattan again, the doppelganger Manhattan of my dreams. Went there by train, through Nevada, Kansas, and Missouri; arrived at sunset (the sun setting in the east, as it always does in my dreams), crossing the Hudson on an impossibly high bridge that spanned the gap between the impenetrable cliffs and forests of New Jersey and the labyrinthine maze of freeways and floating skyscrapers of lower Manhattan. Can’t remember what I had to do there, but I took the train later through Boston and then Montreal to some desolate station in the snowbound mountains.

One is accustomed, perhaps, to the visceral emotions that accompany dreams (or that perhaps cause them). Lately that sensation – of emotions that seem more real than physical reality – has been creeping into my waking world. Like that odd bicycle ride down to the marina, but more aesthetic than theological. After a thunderstorm the other day I spent the better part of the morning up in the park watching the light change as the clouds blew away. Understood for the first time why someone like Turner or Monet had to spend their whole lives observing light in order to paint like they did.