experiences not dreams but experienced as though they were

 1. In a store downtown selling pens, notebooks, and art supplies.  I see a friend, JR, I recognize her from the back and she turns around. We have a brief conversation. I see that that another friend of J's I also know, KG, is also there a few feet away. JR says, "I didn't know you drew."  I said, "I don't... well, I do, but that's not why I'm here." Then I wonder if these two women draw as well. 

II. I suffer from bad vision close up. I can read well in bright sunlight or large print, but some things defeat me, like dark blue letters printed on a lighter blue background, as on one the credit cards I have.  I had to pick up the keys to an air--n-b yesterday here in Madrid. There was a lock box with shiny metal letters in relief, reflecting light, and I had great difficulty discerning them. The light from the flashlight on my phone only made them worse. I had to turn one of the dials to a 1, and could only do that by finding the zero and then turning it one more notch. The process took me several minutes. This place was about a miles from my actual apartment; for some reason I had to go to two places in order to get into the place. 

III. In a bookstore, I saw a book of Lydia Davis's essay (in English). I was reading an essay about her revision of a story about a house besieged. She explained the origins of the story (in her own life) and presented two versions of it.  I immediately thought of Cortázar's "Casa tomada." I bought the newest novel by Menchu Gutiérrez (from that  samebookstore) and she talks there about Maupassant going crazy and imaging a dark presence taking over his house every time her leaves it. I don't buy the Davis essays because I have some of them already (on kindle app) and don't want to carry a heavy book home from Spain written in English. Surely, though, there is a motif of the "taken house" that is common to many writers. 

IV. It occurs to me that Lydia Davis and I have the same culture. She cites Ron Padgett and might like Borges and be interested in translation. There might be a 70% overlap, which is very high. Then I start to think in Spain, people I will see here, we might share another 70% (but not the exact 70%).