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..."

From William James' Address to the Graduates of the Boston [Women's] Normal School of Gymnastics, Class of 189X

They tell us that in Norway the life of the women has lately been entirely revolutionized by the new order of muscular feelings with which the use of the ski, or long snow-shoes, as a sport for both sexes, has made the women acquainted.  Fifteen years ago the Norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, the "domestic angel," the "gentle and refining influence" sort of thing.  Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy; and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform.  I cannot but think that the tennis and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle-craze which are so rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this country are going also to lead to a sounder and heartier moral tone, which will send its tonic breath through all our American life.