Honey in the rock and the sugar don't stop

[sovay]

I did not sleep last night. The sore throat I've been sick with since Friday turned into the kind of cough that does its best to prevent that. I had a doctor's appointment in Medford at nine o'clock, however, so at seven o'clock I crawled out of bed, drank half a carton of orange juice, stood for way too long in the grey cold to catch a bus, made my appointment exactly on time, stood for way too long in the bright cold to catch a bus, read another chapter of Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead (2012), crawled back into bed and promptly passed out: and managed to stay that way until a little before three o'clock, when I think I might have coughed my way awake again. I am not running a fever, however, and so I am still attending the rescheduled Burns Supper tonight with derspatchel and many other fine musical people. I don't know if I'll be able to sing, but there'll be whisky and I can listen. In the meantime, I'm drinking a lot of hot goat's milk and honey and tea.

I'm not sure if it was a nightmare or just the final image of a weird story: I dreamed of Dionysos after the sparagmos, put back together wrong. His skin was stitched together with ivy tendrils, suckers spidering across the fawn-colored jagged flesh; the chewed gaps of the Titans' teeth had been spackled with grape-crushings, pine-tarry staunchings of dry needles and cone-scales pushed into the holes at flank or throat or forearm. There was no blood; it had dried long ago, in grape-juice tricklings. His head was a panther's, pollen-gold and dappled, set sleek on his boy's shoulders, but its eyes were the brown and white glass of a bronze statue. It turned and saw me, blinking softly furred lids. I knew something in there lived and was divine, but I wasn't sure what it was anymore. Breaker of chains, Dionysos who rends the ordinary from the day like the skin from the skull: I hoped I hadn't prayed for him. I had been reading a book, but I can't remember if he was its last page.

In other stories—

1. Three different people sent me the news last night: two new poems of Sappho have been recovered.

2. The testimony of Pete Seeger before the House Committee on Un-American Affairs, August 18, 1955. His life was a contribution.

3. Calling all nineweaving: the complete Ben Jonson is now online.

The dead keep singing, out of rivers, out of deserts, out of long-dry ink and just-stilled strings. I am glad of them.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I wish you sleep and healing. I'm glad you're not running a fever, and I hope you have a good time at the Burns Supper, whether or not you can sing.

That dream is intense and fascinating. Thank you for writing about it.

Thanks for the links as well.

The dead keep singing, out of rivers, out of deserts, out of long-dry ink and just-stilled strings. I am glad of them.

Very well said. I agree.

[sovay]

and I hope you have a good time at the Burns Supper, whether or not you can sing.

I had a wonderful time; and even sang, which I had not been sure I'd be able to do. It was a good remembrance of all kinds of singers.