Dream from Night of July 18

I was sitting in the courtyard and she looked down at me from the window up above. It was a brick apartment building and she was at least ten floors up. She was older 60s or 70s with short dark hair. She opened the window and said something about sesame bagels and all the seeds in the window track and on the windowsill. I simply said, “Sweep them out for the birds. They’ll love them.” She smiled, and we began talking.

I don’t know where I was, but it seems like it could’ve been New York and I was on vacation or on a trip. I didn’t live there. She was very kind to me and said something about those my age, as if I was much younger. I told her how old I was and when I said I was 70 she looked down and quickly turned her head as if she didn’t believe me. I don’t remember too much more about that conversation, but I do remember going up to her apartment. She showed me the window in her kitchen where she’d looked down at me that day. It was an old apartment with good old smells of family and sesame bagels. Her husband lived there, but I don’t think I saw him. Old furniture with years and years of generations, sitting, talking, Living Life. We were going out. We both got dressed and ready and I remember saying something about not having a coat or a sweater. She asked me if I needed one and I told her I thought I might have one. I remember going up three flights of stairs to the room I was staying, but then I don’t remember much else. It was the conversation from the window. The sesame bagels. The birds. I do remember looking down from her window at a balcony, a few floors down where there were dozens of pigeons, and there was a cat walking on his hind feet like Bernadette’s cat in the photo. She told me he was sort of the watcher of the birds, but he never killed them. For some reason, they worried about him. He was very tall.