Visions of Half Sleep

The sun shines and plants grow. From this, all else: French cuisine, Gregorian chants, a rusty Corolla by the side of the highway, a tennis call rolling down a paved road. A green leafy thing figured out how to turn sunshine into energy, and men close the seal on their pressurized tube and plumb the depths of oceans, frequently, but not always, returning to the dry air. Mysteries abound, and this...

We witness miracles daily; any sufficiently distant event is indistinguishable from a miracle. What we do not understand elicits emotion—at times intense. The nature of that involuntary response determines character. If the unknown makes us afraid, we gravitate to stupid, macho leaders who stoke our suspicion of outsiders and change. If we order the thing on the menu we’ve never heard of, if we se...

That old Arthur C. Clarke quote about technology so advanced it might as well be magic—that applies to sounds in the city, as well. The concrete beneath your feet as firm and as unyielding as physics allows is shaken by… what? There’s something down there. Something monstrous and strange in those tunnels. If I were a dragon (alas!), I’d hide in the subway tunnels that perforate NYC bedrock. Nobody...

When we really think about it, when we trace the genealogy back back back, then we must come to terms with the fact that old great grandma Persimmon from the old country had a grand who was a fish with legs. That had to be an awkward family reunion with the scaly relations at one end of the table perhaps in a tray of cool mud while the more recent ancestors eyed them warily, certain that they were...

The Great Peshtigo Fire swept through Northeast Wisconsin on October 8, 1871 — the same night as the far more famous Great Chicago Fire. Chicago lost something like 300 souls. Peshtigo lost 2,500. A managed burn for clearing brush and timber was caught by fierce autumn winds and became an inferno no person could outrun, a firestorm with convection currents reaching thousands of feet and ground win...

Once upon a time there was a scientist whose fondest wish was to see the world clearly and to then help others to do the same. His favorite shoes are hip waders, and his friends are worms and tadpoles and the moss that grows above the water line. His daughter is smarter than he is but has determined that none of the muck and flow is of real interest to her, and he is hurt and puzzled. His ruminati...

Some memories are best left buried. When a child apprehends the world as they find it, truth and invention filter the same light through different lenses. A missing parent. A mother who holds too much back. A man whose pursuit of his own truth sacrifices things he holds most dear. Missing friends who have left for transformative experiences without you — they will not come back as they were; they...

The landscape here is flooded — lush wetlands rising with memories of the life that came before and the life still to come. From wooded hillsides where new houses are going up come the calls of languages from across this wet globe. From boardwalk shores with claw machines and hot dog stands come the misty eyes of young lovers bearing gifts beyond themselves. Later, in a dream, a friend long gone w...

Bell wonders: “Whence a model for worthy life / measure? Where from a manual / for husbandly virtue? How to return / when thoughts negotiate escape / to spring worlds far and new?” This episode wonders how one figures out what kind of life is worth living. How does one keep score while the game is still in progress? How does a person understand the effects of actions and inactions across decades?...

It is hard enough to close one’s eyes at the end of a day thinking about the missed opportunities, the moments when our weakness was demonstrated beyond doubt, without bringing other people into the frame. Once we allow others in, we risk them hurting us or, even worse, us hurting them. “Breakwater Serenade” is about forgiveness unearned, which is the only kind of forgiveness any of us is likely t...

Death is the theme, close observers are we all, and the longer one lives, the closer we get to our final dance. In a dream, one man meets an old friend who has made that journey years before. That’s “Candy’s House,” and the bear chases us all through this wilderness and we look for temporary shelter wherever we can find it. Professor David Hastings can see his own finish line, but he longs for mor...