Earth Day

 

April 22, 2021

Exquisite dream: like the youngest son in a fairy tale, I’ve left home and wander through landscapes and townlands. I have a tent, but my only other resource is a pot of dry beans. People along the way seem eager to buy these beans. I think it’s for food, but it turns out that drums and instruments do not function properly unless they’re filled with these beans. I come to a building, like the Phil Mechanic, except in the middle of open fields, which is a sort of commune of artists and musicians. I decide I want to stay there, so I use the beans to help me make new kinds of instruments, and when the musicians have a concert, they invite me to join. I’m embarrassed at the first concert because I don’t have the right clothes, but otherwise everything goes well. I’m given a room in the commune, where I construct a giant instrument of wood and ivory and beans, like a great organ, which can be played from my room but reverberates through the whole complex. I invent a kind of oboe which, filled with the beans, can make any sound in the world. We become famous, and people journey to hear us. I’m very happy. I dig a plot on the grounds so I can plant the beans and assure the supply. A young man named Ping arrives to help with the garden. Ping is handsome, but I don’t think of him in that way until one night he climbs into my bed and embraces me. In the embrace I think “Is this well?” The answer is that it is well. In the dream I lie in Ping’s arms imagining the movement of a strange cut-out moon over the bean garden.

Sound of maple keys dinging the side of the house.

Sound of flashing ripped from the roof next door, like continuous thunder, like a bear digging in through the windows. I stopped hearing it once I realized what it was.