I was with my friend Ray, looking at some sort of historic display.  There was a canoe from some warrior people.  I was learning how seriously they took their wars.  They had a stringent set of rules for how their boats would be.  In the rear end of the boat was the one who had little rank and respect, somewhat like a servant or lowly apprentice.  He would have to have his nose cut off.  There was a display/exhibit with a sort of hole, and a curved blade with a tooth point on the top, angled downwards.  This was what was used to remove the nose.  In many cases, the person in the middle of the boat, the stroke caller, would be a paraplegic or somehow malformed.  If not, the person would often have his legs amputated, so the canoe would be lighter, or so that they could fit a fourth person on the boat.  It all seemed very severe and primitive, unfortunately permanent, and uselessly traditionally based.  This was a very strong and proud people.  I was curious about the nose amputation.  The leg amputation at least seemed to have some reason behind it, and was something I'd heard of before.  But nose amputation was new to me and I couldn't understand the purpose.  I was also curious about the tool.  Based on its shape, I couldn't tell if just the tip of the nose was amputated, or the whole nose.  It seemed like only the tip could be easily removed with the tool being the shape it was.  I asked Ray about this and tried to imagine being that noseless warrior.  I picked up the nose sheath used during amputation and put it on.  I tried to imagine what it would feel like to not have a nose, whether my face would just be flat.  Ray touched my upper lip with his finger and said it might be like that.  Then we were underwater.  I guess Ray had scuba gear, but I didn't.  I sort of jokingly expelled all my air and sank down, landing on my right side in the sand.  I lay there like that, 'playing dead'.  Ray got worried and came over.  I opened my eyes briefly to see.  He lifted me up and tried pushing me up towards the surface to get air.  I was amused by this at first until I realized how desperate my body suddenly felt for air, and that I had no quick way of getting it.  Then I was talking to a strange man, who I guess we determined to be related to me somehow.  He wanted me to help him out with something.  We planned something out, and I was driving.  I passed him on the street corner before I saw him, and I was supposed to have stopped.  So I backed up.  For some reason the man felt like the cop passing needed some explanation, so he told him I had flipped him off or maybe cut him off, so he wanted to "have some words" with me.  I thought this would draw more suspicion from the police than saying nothing, and I thought he might intervene so that "having some words" wouldn't turn into a fight.  But the cop didn't seem much to care and we were able to pass whatever information we needed to.  My amaryllis was in bloom and at some point later, I finally got my mother in to see it.  She said it was different from Uncle Bert's for some reason.  I went to look at the plants; I think there were three.  A dead rose was accidentally dropped in the vase, and somehow the plant became an amaryllis-rose hybrid.