Cold Brother

When you spend enough waking time noticing coincidences, it's inevitable that you'll start dreaming about it. I dreamt that I ran into the name or title Cold Brother in two very different books within a short space of time and that I found this coincidence highly significant. I understood it to be a superstitiously indirect way of referring to Death, who in Homer and Hesiod is the brother of Sleep.

I can't remember what the first book was, but the second was a children's book, illustrated in an early-1960s style reminiscent of Crosby Newell Bonsall (Who's a Pest?). I can't remember how Cold Brother figured into the story, but the last page had a picture of a bear saying, "I love it. It it it it it." I don't think he meant Cold Brother, but who knows.

All this took place while I was stationed in a place I thought of as "Arizona" -- though I also thought of it as bordering both Utah and Minnesota -- having been called up for what in the dream was my third stint as a full-time Mormon missionary. I told them that I drank coffee and tea, didn't attend church, and didn't even own any "Louis Vuitton undershirts," but none of that seemed to be a problem. Since, the church people conceded, I was "much closer to fifty than twenty" and had adult responsibilities, I would only have to serve for the month of October rather than for the customary two years.