The outskirts of some glorious dreamtime city, part Flag and part ABQ, but bigger and more vibrant than both put together.

In the mountains, within the Peaks, we were alone together, driving dirt roads and no one up there like the old days–Senator Highway magic. Down closer to town though there were caravans. Some had all dogs. Others had meals laid out banquet style on flatbeds.

I guess that made us hungry so we (by we I mean everybody) went all the way down and found a restaurant. While we were pushing tables together, and bringing chairs, at one moment I realized I was bringing the wrong kind of chair. That triggered a desire in me to want to be alone. I started in the gift shop looking at hats, but they were wrong too, so I went out.

Lots of strange interesting things happened. A post office packed with two whole rooms full of people waiting in line, and no masks. (That made me want to get back out too.) A right turn onto a barely recognizable Carlisle Boulevard. A national election happening that no one seemed to care about–I was trying to get results on a transistor radio.

Can you see the patterns like I do on waking? It was a better country by far. I was the same person.

Eventually I arrived at the crux. It happened in a public park. I ran into a very ancient black woman I’d known before, and as we exchanged pleasantries I began to realize that she loved me unconditionally and that she always had each time I’d encountered her.

(Maybe she was the Oracle and maybe She was God, but all I know for sure was that she was the Other and too good for this world; just right, for that one that I dream about.)

I had a guilt for not staying in touch with her (in truth I don’t stay in touch with anybody) and it made me very talkative. I was trying to make up for lost time. At some point we were briefly interrupted by another woman, white, who said she was my doctor and that she had some test results to discuss when I found time. I knew she was right but it was like I was meeting her again for the first time, and she took her dogs to some other part of the park.

I turned back to the Oracle and she looked concerned, asking me about the tests and my health.

I launched into it, maybe a little reluctantly, but full bore while I had the chance. I told her the truth.

I told her I was born with a hole in my head. (That’s as good a metaphor as any, for the reality.) My condition, the reaction of my parents, these shaped me fundamentally …

I told her about being a golden child genius and skipping grades and all, about being my own kind of broken angelic superstar. There are no lies in that.

But I didn’t grow up in that world of free mountains and vibrance and oracles, I grew up in this one over here. Now the superstardom feels like another time and another world, because, well, it is. The river flows.

Coming down from the mountain to chat with conditionless love in the park, now I am briefly the belletrist again. I can’t hold onto this feeling, but I can capture it in the amber of prose. I can honor the gift.

I do what I can because it is what I can do.

It’s never enough to satisfy me or anybody. This lesser world I live in was always more sparse, and it’s drying out fast on every level.

Today I am Eliot without the dumb religion. Today I am Pound, without the fascistic sympathies.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you something less, but for a lightning flash of today I can tell you something so much more. Mira, mira, look. See.