And every evening at midnight he would come to my window and sing

[sovay]

Of the two windows in my room, I like best the view from the one at the head of my bed: a pine tree as tall as the house with tiny new cones greening at the tips of its branches and a white-flowering tree beyond. If I peer down at an angle, I can see the lilac bush just on the other side of the neighbor's fence. Outside the other is the second-floor deck at the back of the house next door. It's directly on a level with my bedroom; so far I haven't seen anything out there except a cooler and some plastic chairs, but I imagine in summer I may have to start drawing the blinds. Last night I dreamed there was an airship there instead, tethered in a web of ropes and cables and thumping extremely loud bass music. I pushed the window open (as in waking life, the sash sticks badly) and shouted out whether they could turn it down. It was a little after dawn, the deepwater surfacing light that I hate trying to sleep in. The man at the rail of the airship was wearing a top hat and vest, of the style that means either steampunk or Somerville casual, but he also went back into the wheelhouse and the music dropped to a level I could sleep through with earplugs in. After I woke up in the afternoon, which was kindly overcast so that the sun streaming in through the blinds didn't pry me awake at nine o'clock anyway, he leaned on his rail and I sat in my window (it's not a casement or a window seat, it just doesn't have a screen, either) and we talked about movies. He was recommending something from the New Wave called Criteria, of which I have a few seconds' memory because it was a dream: a small collection of figures walking between hedgerows, brightly colored in silent, Polaroid-grainy frame-skips, a red-jacketed child with its hand in the hand of a much taller figure I didn't want to identify as adult, because that might imply it was human. I don't remember what I was telling him to watch, except I think it also didn't exist. He was roundish, fair-bearded, not anyone I knew from waking. He rolled up the sleeves of his striped shirt and he wasn't wearing any watches.

Comments

[sovay]

I love the idea of sovay's airship psychopomp.

I'm not sure he's my psychopomp. I like airships as much as the next person who wasn't on the Hindenburg, but I think mine would have to do more with sailing. He could very definitely be somebody's, though.

The echt Somerville topper is very different from the Cantabridgian one, as worn by the gaunt revenant who haunted Harvard Square in his Summer-of-Love poncho, as if he'd lost the Incredible String Band somewhere.

A study of the species must be made.