[Image: a page from cartoonist Roz Chast’s 2023 book — a “graphic novel,” but not really — called I Must Be Dreaming. The book is about, well, dreaming, and consists mostly (as with this page) of accounts of Chast’s own dreams.]

From whiskey river:

Strange Life

It’s as if you are alone in a room
in an empty house and there’s music
playing somewhere, the kind of
music that you always knew would
accompany a moment like this
The air is heavy. The water in
the pool outside looks like glass
The color of everything can be
described as in the blue hour,
which eventually fades to gray
Yes, it’s a strange life
But wait. It’s getting stranger still

(Eleanor Lerman [source])

…and:

I stand before you tonight to represent the people who do not count: The poor, the poets, and monks. As long as there are people who are trying to realize the divine in themselves, there shall be hope in the world.

(Thomas Merton [source])

Not from whiskey river:

At the Choral Concert

The high school kids are so beautiful
in their lavender blouses and crisp white shirts.

They open their mouths to sing with that
far-off stare they had looking out from the crib.

Their voices lift up from the marble bed
of the high altar to the blue endless ceiling

of heaven as depicted in the cloudy dome—
and we—as the parents—crane our necks

to see our children and what is above us—
and ahead of us—until the end when we

are invited up to sing with them—sopranos
and altos—tenors and basses—to sing the great

Hallelujah Chorus—and I’m standing with the other
stunned and gray fathers—holding our sheet music—

searching for our parts—and we realize—
our voices are surprisingly rich—experienced—

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth—
and how do we all know to come in

at exactly the right moment?—Forever and ever—
and how can it not seem that we shall reign

forever and ever—in one voice with our beautiful
children—looking out into all those lights.

(Tim Nolan [source])

…and:

One day we were talking, he was describing something to me, and one of the first words he used in his description was a term I did not really know the meaning of and even though I understood all the subsequent elucidations no picture could come together in my mind because of this one fundamental detail that I was largely unclear of. This made me shy and anxious because something was forming in my head regardless and I knew it was all wrong and I didn’t want for anything connected with him to be inaccurate because I knew I’d only get to have one or two things about him to remember and so naturally I was very keen for those one or two things to be limpid and precise. What does that mean, I said. What does what mean, he said. Cantilevered, I said. Cantilevered, he said. Yes, I said, I don’t know what it means really. And he explained to me what cantilevered means and it must have been that my face still looked concerned because he held his hand flat out in front of us and he took my hand and placed it vertically beneath his so that my fingertips connected with those little mounds where his own fingers began and, just like that, everything came together. That’s it, he said, that’s cantilevered. And of course the picture that fell into place only highlighted the life he had and the hopelessness of me supposing I could ever be a part of it. Even so, I loved the way he said it. Cantilevered. Cantilevered. I love the way he said that word. Cantilevered. I will never hear it and I will always hear it.

(Claire-Louise Bennett [source])

…and:

Rare Moment

A clear choice
is so sweet. Not
reluctance but
real resistance.
Joy-to-bursting,
or none.
Grief,
not gradations.
Someone essential
and someone not.
A good, dark
strike-through
versus
weighing everything
at the end of each day.
Look, a cat killed a cardinal
on an emerald lawn.
For so many reasons
it shouldn’t have been
beautiful.
But that’s also
the kind of book
I like best.

(Lia Purpura [source])

…and, as a bookend for Roz Chast’s Shoe-a-Rama dream, here’s one of mine, from just before the alarm went off this morning:

I’m in a small elevator lobby, with about a half-dozen other people. Among them is the person to my right (not sure if they’re male or female): about my height, heavyset but not fat — “burly,” I guess. That person is wearing paint-spattered overalls and has the bearing of one of those people mysteriously sure of themselves.

“Hey,” the painter says, loudly and gruffly, to no one in particular, “I got one for ya.” We all avoid looking at one another. “What’s the difference,” the painter says, “between an elephant and an eckaphant?”

Yes: eckaphant.

Nervous titters, mingled perhaps with a few whispered prayers for the elevator’s accelerated arrival. I can see in the setup that this will be a punning joke of some kind, playing on the difference between a Cockney “hell” and “heck.”

The painter beams at us all — and then drops the punchline. It is so deeply stoopid — utterly non sequitur — that I’ve already forgotten it. Something like, oh, who knows… something like “One’s blue and the other ain’t!”

Yet despite the joke’s moronic humor — well, I don’t know what came over me. Despite that, I guffaw. LOUDLY.

The painter side-eyes me. Past the painter’s shoulders, I can suddenly see, there’s a separate room which holds a few more passengers-in-waiting: the painter’s crew. rough-hewn, poorly shaved, in likewise once-white overalls. They’re leaning around the doorway to see what kind of jackass laughed at the loudmouth’s stoopid joke: they’re looking, goggle-eyed, at me.

The elevator gets to our floor and the doors begin to open…

[The alarm clock goes off.]

(JES)