I'm riding a bus in China. A talkative guy persuades me to join his project to teach dogs to fly planes. At first I blame my rusty Chinese, but I heard right. He offers to be my mentor.

But once he's roped me in, he relaxes and talks too fast for me to understand; I only get isolated words.

He hands me knives. Sharp ones. I get cut a little. Uh-oh.

Now our bus speeds up. It's racing alongside a taxiing plane, to show the dog driving the bus what speed's necessary for takeoff. Ah, they do it in stages, teaching the dogs to be bus drivers first. Sensible.

I have no idea what I can do to help such an agenda. Why recruit me? I mean, I'm not needed; our canine driver seems to get the program just fine! The bus careens on, pacing the plane perfectly, while I dutifully juggle knives on my bouncing seat and try to translate shouted, slangy, too-fast Chinese... feeling, for some reason I can't quite place, just a little overwhelmed.

• Teaching a dog to fly is like... Oh. Like learning how to date again, safely, after getting battered by my last girlfriend.
• Hopeless? Well, no. Just scary hard, demanding a fierce focus--like juggling knives on a bouncing bus. My conscious has no idea how to go about it, but apparently my animal side does...
• And as the I Ching says, "dogged perseverance furthers". And yeah, I suspect the dream meant that pun--after all, the whole dream is a shaggy-dog joke on the ambiguity of "pilot program".

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