I guess I'm George Orwell or something

taco tote papota, quesadilla, y tostadas, todos con salsas, agua

I've gone to this (Spanish?) city. I'm supposed to meet up with Stephanie there. I don't know if we've gone knowing that the war is back on, or if the fresh violence has caught us off guard, but here we are and I'm glad to be in the thick of it. I feel I'm keeping just one step ahead of one faction or other, and I know that we are in danger here, not only from the caprices of war, but from the politics of the situation, too.

There's some trudging about in this dream, but I don't remember, some geographical references to the area around the Ventura gate by my parents' house. But then I am making my way through the city to the hotel where we will meet up. It is cold, there is some old sludgy snow on the ground though most is gone. There are bodies here and there. I'm walking past a fence covered in mesh cloth, like around a construction site, I can catch glimpses through and there is the body of a man face down in the winter-white grass just beyond. Maybe a uniform. You don't stop to look. You keep moving with the rest of the people around you.

I spend the night at my hotel. The flattened remains of "St. Bartholomew's" is across the street, recently largely torn down, not bombed. I can see the ruin of it from a window. There are people moving around in it, in the surrounding yard.

The next morning, I know that they are coming for me. It will be tricky; I have to meet Stephanie here, but I have to time it so that they don't arrest me while I'm waiting. I slip out of my room and around a corner moments before they come and kick the door in. I make my way downstairs. Stephanie should be here any moment. Through cracks between the planks that cover the windows, I can see that what was left of St. Bartholomew's is gone, eliminated. The very earth has been set in drifts like snow around the old churchyard. There is a buxom blonde woman in a black dress with tiny polka dots reclining on a sort of stool set againt a pillar, smoking a cigarette through a long holder. She doesn't acknowledge me, but I speak to her anyway, not even certain if I can trust her, she may turn me over to the men.

"It was bombed last night?"

"Uh huh."

"I don't know why, it was already just a ruin."

"Yep."

Stephanie is there, we have to go. We get out of the building. As we trudge along in a crowded street. She tells me about the man who helped her find me there, about about his flamboyant boyfriend who wore heels. There are more bodies today, lots more. Walking across a park, I look to one side, a low space between two hills, there are several bodies on the ground, people there apparently to claim them. I want badly to take a picture but I'm afraid that people will see and I'll be beaten for being callous, or worse. We walk past the cloth covered fence, I spy the body there again, the grass has seemed to crawl up over it. It's as dead as the corpse, so I know it hasn't grown, I wonder if wind-- or the bombs?-- has somehow moved the grass up over the side of the body.

Another body, but this one is different. It is face up, its arms out and flexed, almost in a state of surrender. The wrists are secured to the ground with heavy cords or tubing. It's been left as a warning, as a desecration. No one dares to try to move it. It's a young man with short, sandy blonde hair. Not more than 18 or 19, in an olive drab wool uniform coat with red and yellow patches or decorations at the shoulder.

We keep moving, getting toward our goal of a market and train station.