I live in New York, I think--big stone towers and not much green. I wander town, endlessly. Don't know why. I'm barefoot, always. Tough soles; been like this a while. Years. I carry a small valise from my childhood in the 1930s, that's all.

Am I homeless? Unclear.

I'm not being coy, I just don't know. My memories are... multiple. I've experienced a dozen forking timelines at once. Confusing, but they're all similar, so it's bearable. I leaf through my stories as if each life is a page in a scrapbook. But not consecutive, as in traditional reincarnation; simultaneous lives!

Each fork has an image of me. I'm female in most, male in a few, but I all look similar--a staring, wide-eyed waif. I'm child-size in every memory... over decades. I never grow.

Am I immortal?

On the street, people usually ignore me--step around me, noticing me just enough to avoid me, but never meeting my eyes or answering my words. I'm forgettable. I'm lonely.

Am I a ghost?

Today I'm climbing a spiral stair in a big stone building. Being ignored has advantages. In bad weather I can sleep in hotels. And I like to explore. I avoid elevators, always take the stairs. Elevator buttons don't reliably work when I push, like I'm only half-here. That's okay, climbing's good exercise.

As I climb, I pass a crew carrying big paintings down the stairwell. They don't panic at the sight of me--which is odd. On the street, I get ignored--but not on stairs. Usually, people meeting me indoors see me as a cat, and on stairs, see me as a big cat--big as a mountain lion!

So their lack of panic shakes me. It's just not normal. My normal.

Am I fading?

I wonder. What job? All those paintings... are they taking down a show, is this a museum? Doesn't seem like it; looks like a fancy old residential hotel. They're not movers--just art, not a stick of furniture. Are they robbing some rich guy's penthouse?

I head back down the stair to the lobby and out of the building--whatever it is--snickering "If you're gonna burgle, burgle big..."

Intervene? Billionaires, burglars, growing up, getting seen, living, loving, hating, dying... you all shun me! Why should I take sides? I walk between you all...

And I wake.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Multiple, parallel pasts: dreamwork itself! I often dream of other lives, in other times, places--and bodies.
• Old suitcase from the Depression: emotional baggage. My parents grew up in that era--a harder time than this. I learned a stingy caution around money... and people?
• Shunned on the street: I'm autistic; my body language is more like a wild animal (I fear to meet your eyes--that's a threat display) marking me as someone to avoid.
• Ageless, solitary, unnoticed: maybe I am a ghost. But strangely free for one: I have the run of a huge city. And ghosts rarely get mistaken for pumas...
• Old hotel in New York, art thieves: Steve Martin's show Only Murders in the Building. Steve & friends start a podcast telling how they try to solve a murder in their old residential hotel. One motive may be a valuable painting that moves around the building, stolen and re-stolen...
• I'm usually seen as a big cat on indoor stairs: huh? in Only Murders in the Building, Steve's stepkid Lucy explores secret passages, looking rather feline--to us the viewers. Others don't see her at all, like me in the dream. But... dream-me didn't resemble her much.
• If it's an art heist, I won't call the cops: again, we autistics often get ignored or excluded. So I don't feel obliged to side with any of your tribes.
• Much of the dream baffles me, but isn't this stairwell scene suspiciously shamanic?
  • On the street--the material plane--I drift through time, forgettable, perhaps insubstantial. But...
  • I climb to higher floors: up to higher, visionary planes.
  • Climb by my own power--no easy elevators for me! My shamanic dreamwork uses no psychedelics.
  • Up there, I seem a big cat--quite visible, but now I scare people. So I'm lonely whether visible or not.
  • That art carried down from a high floor--is it my own dream-art? Images from dream-levels made material--smuggled down to the busy waking world. No wonder I didn't blow the whistle on their heist!

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