I'm curious if people's dreams were more vivid after seeing “Inception,” the movie about dreams. I don't know if mine were but here's the one I remember. Apologies in advance for doing something so dull as recounting a dream.

I go downstairs with a friend and her child. It's like a hospital cafeteria with lots of light and windowed walls—like at the Seattle Opera—and we sit at a lunch table across from another woman. I'm wondering if she's thinking the child is mine, that we're a couple and this is our kid, when she begins to talk. She actually begins to pitch. She has these movie reviews that she wants us to read. Does she know I used to review movies for The Seattle Times and MSNBC? No. But when she hears my name she recognizes it from my MSNBC days and strengthens her pitch—her need to get me to read these reviews. I look at them. There are about four, each about three pages long, each individually stapled. The top page is slightly mottled, and there are coffee stains and crumbs, and I'm thinking, “God, what a waste of time.”

I read somewhere that we're pretty lousy at figuring out our own dreams but here I go. I'm that woman. Those mottled reviews? They're mine, posted here, once a week. The thought I have in the dream is the doubt I have every day.

Give me a dream about Marion Cotillard any day.

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