I was walking around an outdoor pool in the courtyard of a hotel.  I remembered learning that the hotel had once had sharks swimming in the pool along with people, but this had had disastrous consequences.  The sharks had bitten off the limbs of swimmers who were then unable to get out of the pool, and the sharks had even been seen jumping out of the water to attack people walking near the pool’s edge.  So, they got rid of the sharks.  Their new idea was to use the pool in a series of homages to American cities, in which the pool would be filled with food representing that city.  I remembered seeing an image of a postcard with a photo of the pool completely filled with chili.  With what looked like cheese, the word “Cincinnati” was written over the chili in huge, yellow, cursive letters.  The next month, the pool would be filled with food representing Chicago.

I was visiting my old high school, where I discovered in the atrium that there were murals painted by Gustav Klimt. They depicted women with very long, dark hair who appeared to be floating under water. They seemed only vaguely familiar to me, and I realized that I must not have fully appreciated their importance when I had been a student there.

Then I took the stairs down to the lower level where the art classes were held. To my surprise, the whole basement was flooded with water about four feet deep. The water was a greenish color, but it seemed to reflect a very warm, golden light. I started to swim down the hallway, and I noticed that several other people were swimming, too, including one of my current colleagues and her young son. It all seemed very purposeful, as if modelled on the canals of Venice. Something about the warm light also made it feel very historical, as though it were from the Baroque or the Byzantine era. I felt very lucky to have gone to this high school, even though I didn't have any concrete recollections of it being like this. Occassionally I also had moments of confusion, when I couldn't see how the art classes could actually be held under these conditions.