March 31

We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

March 30

"Pressing the flesh."

March 29

And now the rains come.

March 28

We are frozen in amber now, like scarabs from prehistory.   From this frozen place I see all of the cultural layers of my long life.  And "cultural" for me inevitably means musical.  They begin at late doo-wop/R&B -- He's a Rebel -- and end at Amy Winehouse -- Back to Black.

But there are just too many layers.   Too many.

March 27

In my dream, I was to be initiated into the Rasta enlightenment, "standing in a shaft of light."  But the plan fell victim to a massive electrical storm, and the high priest withdrew, leaving me alone and uninitiated under a thin blue shroud. There I lay worrying about my son, whom I had lost.

In real life, an extended family of South Asians ambled down Shady Hill, mingling without apparent concern in the company of three sprightly young Chihuahuas.

March 26

I dreamed that I watched myself -- a boy of nine -- escaping, with others, from an orphanage into the wider world, with only a satchel on my back.  But when the dream was ending, I lost track of myself for good.

Of the Plague Year -- March 25

The comfort of the familiar.    The coffee will bubble to the top of the French press come what may.   And with a north wind, the synthetic church bells can be heard tolling six.  Quasimodo at the keyboard, wearing a medicinal mask, playing his One Note Samba.

I dreamed that I stole thousands of Percocet tablets, on a bike in Ghana, with a friend.  My brief relief overtaken by the prospect of another day of confinement.

An old unearthed CD -- Elvis Costello's Favorite after Favorite -- slides into my new dash, and so Nick Lowe, never one to stand clear of the abyss, can sing another street-suss serenade: "I"m a mess … for want of your caress..."