Down in "The Muck"

Please read this post at today's entry in Persist: The Blog.

But before you do... here's the tail end of a dream that puzzles me:

I'm at a meeting or workshop of some kind at a sea-front hotel. All the participants are men. The only part I remember is a process where we walk around this big room, confronting other men with a slap on both cheeks. I am not sure whether I am supposed to slap my own cheeks first, then his, or vice versa. It's also unclear how hard the slap is supposed to be: hard enough, I think, to be something of a jolt, but not hard enough to actually hurt.

I find myself looking out of the window at the ocean. The sky is darkening, the horizon line between sea and sky clearly defined, but subtle. Now I notice the arrival of water spouts, dozens of them, white, dancing toward the shore across the surface of the ocean. It's an amazing spectacle. Children are still playing at the beach, people are swimming and water-sporting in the surf, but they seem unperturbed; and indeed, when the waterspouts approach the shore, they change into little, harmless puffs of smoke.

I'm so enchanted by this scene, I call on the others, behind me, to come to the window and take a look, but they are slow in responding, and I'm annoyed that they will miss this beautiful scene I have to share with them...

Does all this, I wonder, have to do with last night's event at the Muckenthaler? What do you think?