I seem to be mostly recovered from the bout I had with food poisoning. At least I think so. This morning I wanted to read, but I have been doing work stuff for the practice: processing paychecks and taxes, recalculating withholding, etc. Not exactly thrilling stuff. Jacob, on the other hand, has been furiously working on the second movement of his String Quartet. I can hear the computer keys clicking, even here in my studio. And I hear keyboard sounds and the occasional silence I know means he is listening on his headphones to something he has just written. The only keys being used over here in the messy studio, up until now, was the calculator keys.
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Dreamt last night I was in Italy. I have no idea where in Italy I was, so it is odd that I "knew" it was Italy. In the dream, I could see the Swiss Alps rising up beyond the edge of a large lake. The water was a kind of basalt grey, in which the white-capped alps could barely be seen in the distant water. There were manicured fir trees and, underfoot, a thinning but very green grass. I was standing at the edge of the grass/yard and then there was a fairly steep drop to a rocky "beach," the lake then spreading out from it toward the Alps. There was the slightest breeze and, although the day was sunny and warmish, the breeze had the slightest chill to it as it came up from the water. Yes, and I knew, in the dream, I was in Italy. But I have never been to this place. It is likely not even a real place. But it seemed so real. It seemed plausible in a way most dreams do not.
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I was tempted this morning to eat my frosted flakes with half and half. I held strong and used 2% milk.
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Do you sometimes ever dream you were a different type of artist, say a photographer instead of a poet? Or a jazz pianist instead of a painter? Lately, I keep imagining what my life would be like now had I not dropped out of painting and started writing poems. The possibilities of where I would be now seem endless and fascinating. Ah, I must be approaching middle age, if I am not already there.
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I had forgotten this poem until
Rick reminded me of it a day or so ago. It had slipped entirely from my mind, but I am glad to have it back.
THE MAD SCENE
Again last night I dreamed the dream called Laundry.
In it, the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share,
The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever
Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly,
Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper
Onto moon-marbly boards. We had just met. I watched
From outer darkness. I had dressed myself in clothes
Of a new fiber that never stains or wrinkles, never
Wears thin. The opera house sparkled with tiers
and tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna,
Trained inward. There I saw the cloud-clot, gust by gust,
Form, and the lightning bite, and the roan mane unloosen.
Fingers were running in panic over the flute's nine gates.
Why did I flinch? I love you. And in the downpour laughed
To have us wrung white, gnarled together, one
Topmost mordent of wisteria,
As the lean tree burst into grief.
--James Merrill
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