Dream of Horses

I step out onto a city street at night and notice Jack Kerouac standing to my right in front of an apartment building entrance, a few steps up from the sidewalk. He’s waiting at the door, next to a beautiful white horse. On the sidewalk below lies a skinny brown horse, dead or dying. I say to him, “So this is where the horses come to die.” He smiles and accompanies me down the street. He hasn’t shaved in a couple days and seems happy drunk, though tired. We talk en route, there’s hardly anyone around, it must be close to dawn in San Francisco or New York. At one point he merrily kisses me on the cheek a couple times, glad to see me. As we stand waiting to cross an intersection I ask him, “What year is it now?” and he answers, “1974!” as though excited at the novelty of this trip. We end up on a side street, heading towards a small house with the lights on, a luminous scene of two or three people inside and he says to me, “That’s my daughter’s house. And she’s beautiful & hip. Can you believe it?” We pause there for a moment, watching the glowing house before going in for food and rest. I wake up from all this and immediately try to write it down. Eventually I start humming the tune to Belle & Sebastian’s “Judy and the Dream of Horses.”