Sometimes I think that these days are the compressed moments seen quickly, from the corner of the eye, in the half-light of the past… a moment of falling asleep, or of seeing the black window and thinking that it could be anywhere outside. Tonight, outside, it’s a rascal vein of cold air, slipping up through the canyons; inside, it’s one of those nicest pools of calm– baby sleeping, daughter sleeping, wife in the bath, dishwasher humming, pencil lines and modal scales falling away, and one soft candle of light, here by the laptop screen. There is a comfort that pervades the palm tree aerie tonight. Which is uncommon. Which is wholeheartedly welcome.
I could move in so many different directions right now. I suppose that is part of my quiet joy — a moment of implicit potential always makes me smile, and the ideas are all jockeying for position in line. In the end, I will probably leave them– all of them. It is too late, and I am too far gone. But it is certainly nice to have them.
We are capable of seeing our future, aren’t we? We can, should we choose, look ahead and see exactly where we’re going, right down to the texture and quality of the air, at night, some decade hence. I know this because I have seen this day, this night, before– and I knew (somehow, somewhere, deep within) that I would experience this. I feel this is one shard of a vision from a night, long ago, in my Easthampton attic. For one moment, I knew New York City was outside my window. Then, I could feel the soft, cool jasmine air on my face. And then… well, much more.
If this seems cryptic, I apologize. I do not intend for it to be so. I mean this very literally– we carry within us not just the seeds, but the vision, of our future. For some reason, we do not permit ourselves to be aware of it, most of the time. So it forces itself on us, in flashes, in moments where we lose control of our single focus and let our consciousness blossom… For me, I see many things when I am entrained in a repetitive task. For this reason, and this reason only, the work at the ‘deli’ in Wastefield was a gift– the repetitive motion was like a dream invocation. I was a shaman for 4 to 6 hours a day, that summer.
I do not understand it, I cannot always evoke it, and I certainly cannot force the visions to be more significant. I see simple things for the most part– dropping coins in a stairwell, telling my father it’s his turn to row, or a particular taste of the air on some spring night in California. Of course, it would be eminently more useful to see some major events.
But there it is.
I did tell you that it was late, and I would not be able to extend the proper hospitality to the small pageant of ideas who got all dressed up for the night’s pleasure. A long long year-and-a-half of broken and shell-shocked sleep leaves me defenseless, at least when the caffeine finally trickles out of the system. And it is that time. Bled dry. So to speak.
So I look back through the many dark windows of past nights, hoping to catch my own eye– for I know I am looking forward, somewhere back there, wondering at this taste, this tremor, this vision. And I look forward, again, to see if I can make sense of the shapes in the dark.