With the sound of the sea hard on my heels

I dreamed last night of a sad, shy man with an elephant's head—less Ganesha than Joseph Merrick literalized—and an off-duty waiter who argued with me that I couldn't claim to like or dislike Chinese poetry until I'd read it in the original. When I fell back asleep, I dreamed about watching a version of "The Little Mermaid" set in a hydrothermal field, black smokers and whale falls and Pompeii worms, all mysteriously animated by Disney. Then I dreamed I had a fever, which was also the case when I woke up; I have had a very unpleasant cold since Tuesday, but I have nothing interesting to say about it. Have some photographs from Monday in Maine instead.

( Take me back on the bay, boys. )