You find yourself at a banquet table. You feel disaffected because the people surrounding you are speaking a language you do not understand. Suddenly, beneath the table, you feel someone's foot on top of your own. You glance up. Your eyes meet those of an attractive person and you sense there is one word that you now must say: "Phlegm." The person stands, and suddenly everyone else at the banquet is gone. As is the table. As are your clothes.
You fling yourselves at each other in passion. You rise up in the air, the sensuality of the experience heightened by clouds brushing past. Yet you begin to sob in shame because you have been observed by your four deceased grandparents, who disapprove. You suddenly realize that the severe-looking man in the black frock coat comforting your maternal grandmother is William Seward, and with great clarity and an inexplicable sense of nostalgia, you recite, "William Henry Seward, U.S. Secretary of State in the Andrew Johnson administration."You're dreaming.
To state a truism, just as the kidney could accurately be described as a kidney-shaped organ, dreams are dreamlike. Why should that be? In real life you wouldn't wind up floating amid the clouds with someone seconds after the touch of a foot. Instead, at such a moment you might remember you forgot to turn off the lights of your car. Dreams, by contrast, are characterized not only by rapid transitions but by a heightened sense of emotionality and irrationality. In dreams, you do things that with two seconds of sensible reflection you couldn't bring yourself to do in real life.