The Waterlily

July 1, 2008

Dream last night. I took my father on a tour of Egypt. Our hotel was right across the street from the Sphinx. We had been invited to a party, and when the dream ended I was convincing him he didn’t have t change his clothes to attend

Had breakfast at 5 Points with DV. We came here then to look at my garden. He brought his guitar, and when we were done with the garden he played songs for me on the guitar, and then on the piano, making its out-of-tuneness seem not quite so horrible. I thought many thoughts while he was singing. I thought what a rare and cherished moment it was to have him singing to me in a way that was just like– well I don’t know like what. Like a different life that I never had. I admired his boldness, his fearlessness, his assumption (correct, as it turned out) of acceptance and delight. I would no more go to anyone’s house and sing for them–or read a poem, or show them a painting-- than fly over the moon. Yet he went forward without a ripple of self-consciousness. His pace is a manly presto and his dynamic is always at or near fortissimo. I did not particularly admire this in the music, but I admired it in the man. I stared at him as he played, thinking that there should be a way to predict those passions in a body that looked exactly like that. What was there in the thickness of his neck or the color of his hair or the arch of his brows that predicted what music he would love, and how he would play it? What was there in his history or his chemistry or his anatomy that would exactly that voice to him, or that dexterity of finger? I had wondered this about my father, as that uniqueness passed away as though it never was. Should I have been filming David to make it last? Is it enough to dig treasuries for this in my mind, so that it might never be erased or rooted out?

Brian came to clean the house, and was in the kitchen listening. When David left, Brian emerged with anger on his face. He was angry that a boy like that should lecture to a man of my credentials and experience about the way the world was. He thought David a brat and an upstart. The truth was I had heard no lecture, nor any tone of lecture, and hadn’t recalled David saying much at all. I recalled the music, blood red with energy and joy, the singing voice of one I love and may never see again.

My first waterlily blooms in the front yard tub. It is pure pale gold.