January 7, 2015

L hears me wheezing on the table and, after hearing of my soul-coughing, diagnoses me with pneumonia. He’s probably right.

Redemptive dreams through the night. Sons were afflicted with some madness, and the medical world despaired of treatment, but their fathers gathered them and each other and founded communes– perhaps I should say monasteries–where father and son lived together and helped each other and slept in each other’s arms, and miraculous cures came to them all, and they were not only healthily, but sanctified in ways that cannot be expressed outside of the dream. I had something to do with this– maybe something from my writing inspired them–and when I came to visit I was admitted without the password. I’d take a couple of them to lunch in town, and they would be strong and happy as gods. I think I was a sort of reporter or medical examiner– or maybe the rhapsode, which is what I am.

Went to the Epiphany Pageant and Burning of the Greens at All Souls last night. It probably wasn’t meant for me, and I felt a little like an intruder, but there were corners for me to creep into. The lawn was covered with boys tossing the football and smaller kids racing around, and I thought that was paradise. The Epiphany pageant was what other places call a Christmas Pageant–we are far too stringent and self-delighted on that point–and there were Magi and angels and what not in excellent costumes. Most of the room was parents with their cell phones out recording what couldn’t quite happen, because of their recording, but the world is at it as. The cute cup ranneth over. Then Todd set fire to a Christmas tree in the yard, and it burned with frightening vigor. A forest fire must be hell indeed.

Felt posthumous yesterday. Feeling redeemed this morning, as though I had just arisen from one of those healing communes– which, by the power of dream, perhaps I have.

A yellow pansy, seeded from the yellow pansies of the summer, is blooming in the flowerbox.