Sloth, Maybe?

In my dream, I was walking through Central Park when I came across a traveling band of actors.   They asked their audience, “We need someone to play Cyrano DeBergerac!   Anyone willing to take up the challenge?”   I stepped forward and said, “I’ll do it!   I’ll play Cyrano!”   One of the actors laughed.   “Your nose is too beautiful.”   I replied, “All I need is some papier-mâché, glue, and tan paint!”   In a few minutes, I had my own Cyrano nose.   The director asked me, “Can you duel?”   I said I practiced ken-jutsu.   They handed a stage sword to me and we went through some forms… slowly.   The actors said I was quite good at blocking, parrying, striking and thrusting.   I was also expected to sing.   For the life of me, I could actually sing in the dream! The play started, and I was allowed to read directly from the text while I handled the sword with my left hand.   I performed the “ Then, as I end the refra...

It began when I was about five.   I was in Mom's room watching the family TV, when over the white noise of the idiot's lantern, I heard a man singing in a voice that hinted at mischief and mockery.  I entered the living room where Mom was playing "Gee, Officer Krupke" from the motion picture soundtrack of West Side Story .  I imagined the singer in a rakish Elizabethan get up:  A garish red jacket ruffled shirt, tight leggings, and an audacious cap with a flamboyant feather as its centerpiece.  I didn't realize how off target I was with the time and place of the story, yet at the same time so close. Not long after, West Side Story was playing on television.  My family was gathered in Mom's bedroom and I saw this world for the first time in my life.  It was New York City - MY city.  An aerial view swept over the blooming skyscrapers and rectlinear streets until it finally settled on the slums of what would one day become Lincoln Center.  My h...