I don’t know; wish I did. All that and oh well.

• I seem to have floundered off the page again. I would be worried if it mattered.
• Strange places in the hovel of memories: 1. Years back—where? Was it Michigan? When I lived in the house on the 10 acre woods. The first dream was that of the whippets. Whippets had long been of some significance although I didn’t know of what. They frequently appeared in my life and were witnessed by the boy and the girl. And then, I dreamed I found a pair of them and took them into the garage there, to the house on the edge of that wood, to wait for their people to arrive and rescue them. (Whippets always appeared in a pair, in reality and in dreams.) And so they did. The next day, out walking with Kate-the-golden-one, down that country road, appeared two whippets, trotting alone and in tandem. I coaxed them into the garage and phoned a radio station then playing at the house, to give the information and request an announcement. The song to go along with the find was “The Happy Wanderer.” (It was a station of oldies.) Not long after the announcement there was a phone call from the whippet people who then came to get them. Of course they had just lost them, of course they just happened to be listening to that station.
• 2. The dream that night was of the raven. Raven or crow, I tend to favor ravens. I found a raven on that very country road, a wounded creature who could not fly. I took it in and gave it great care and nursing. When I was not at home I kept it in my utility room so it could be enclosed and yet have some room. Safety, freedom, and constraint. Noble intentions, noble gifts. Except the beautiful iridescent creature tore a hole right through the wall. There was a plaster and dry wall and two-by-four mess blown clear through to the kitchen. The next day, walking down that same country road, a neighbor came out to ask me if I wanted to take in a crow. He had found an injured one and couldn’t care for it himself. Was I interested? I gracefully declined. I didn’t want the mess of the feathered beauty tearing apart the house, leaving the white mist of drywall powder to cover us there.
• It is after all, a murder of crows and an unkindness of ravens.
• I told the kids who told me I made too much of such things, which I did. I was crazed to know the meaning of them. I had one foot on shore and one at sea…into a fog of meaning and being, into a dream world not called, delivered without quest or anchor. But I could not read the sign. How will I ever know if everything was a dream, if anything was real?
• Last night I got up at four a.m. to read The Winter’s Tale. I wanted to understand what the king said at the end, when he touched the statue of his wife—old now, and gone—and he said she was warm. Who does that—this waking to read? Isn’t that crazy even for me?

Still, it looks like red rock canyon. So many places of country roads, so many places left behind. No one then to love the pilgrim soul, or the moments of sad grace.