Verre

Train—open—more and more crowded—trying to stay secure.

Earlier, plane—everyone had kissed the screen, identical lip print.

Bangkok—know the route from having taken many times.

Scenery from the train amazing, began photographing—tall earthy brown cliffs on the right; later on the left forest, enormous trees, figures of other beings like bas-relief in bark, then we were zooming through a city on the water, buildings alternating from Renaissance to modern faux-vernacular shopping plaza style.

Reminded myself to actually look at the photos after I took them, because when I woke up, they would be unlikely to still be on the camera. Some were amazing, and I was sorry they wouldn't last. Others not so great—we were moving fast, and I couldn't always capture the best angle.

"This is the clearest dream I've had in a long time." Happy because for a while dreams have been distant and dim, frustrating. How did I accomplish this? All I could think was that I had finally wanted it enough. But how did I get lucid? Thought back and tried to remember the moment—this actually destabilized the dream and began waking process, but it was gradual enough that I could think back a bit first—realized there was no "aha!" moment, the lucidity had dawned gradually, probably because it was right before I'd been planning to get up anyway—only genuinely lucid for those last few moments when I started thinking critically about the pictures and the dream itself. At the time, though, I felt not an alteration of circumstance, but a sense of continuity with what had gone before. To be aware that you are dreaming is not unusual; to be aware that you are aware that you are dreaming is to be lucid.

Was the lucidity that which allowed me to appreciate and experience the clarity of the dream? But an appreciation must have preceded lucidity because that's what prompted me to start taking the pictures, before I realized they wouldn't last. And even after I knew they would not persist—I couldn't help hoping that this time would be different from all the others, this time they might cross over, through some miracle.

I was sitting with two women friends (no one I know RL) across a table from the Dalai Lama. One of the women was showing us pictures of a guy she said had just died. The pictures were a vertical strip of three, like those that come out of a photo booth, only larger format, about 3x4 I guess, vertically aligned. What was more striking was the figure in the photos, which didn't look human, but like a skinny reddish angry muppet with an open howling mouth and a shock of hair over its eyes, a bit like Animal but more gangly.

I recognized him at once, though: "That's Kelsang Gyatso," I told the other women. "He's like a dissident, except in relation to mainstream Tibetan Buddhism. It's over some stupid doctrinal dispute." Then I remembered that the Dalai Lama was sitting right across the table and I blushed and apologized, since obviously the dispute was important to him and I hadn't meant to offend. "I just meant it seems stupid to people on the outside."

The Dalai Lama gently admonished me, "It is better not to say things that you might have to apologize for." I felt like retorting, "I know, but I'm not enlightened," but recognized that he was right so I just nodded in acknowledgment.