REVERIE

“Today I saw a grove of fruit trees in a field of yellow flowers, and I relived, for a split second, the strange sublime scene along the road to Cuenca in Spain—where the trees were giant burls with shoots that exploded in yellow leaves like sparklers, backlit as they were by the sun; where the shadows were, for that once in my life, violet; and the grass, beckoning me like soft fingers, was pale and spider-spun. When I suddenly flashed on this memory, I broke out in goosebumps and somewhere I hurt. I got home and lay down and found myself smiling at something that got sweeter and sweeter…but later I couldn’t remember what it was.”

REHEARSAL

“I dreamed a child in my class came to see me and told me that he had seen poison oak up in a woody region where the children often played. I followed him under trees and up the hill to investigate. We came to the edge of a cliff. There the world dropped away to a green wilderness so far below I might have been seeing it from the window of a plane. Suddenly the ground beneath me gave way and I pitched down the slope. I had a fleeting hope for salvation—two plastic bags, a story in height, full of white gravel, were directly in front of me. But on impact, they jarred loose and tumbled down into that picture postcard abyss, with me free-falling after them. With unqualified belief, I knew that oblivion was at hand. I felt a first heave of fear against a door in my mind, but I threw my will against it, so that I could meet the end in full self-possession. In dazed waking astonishment, I experienced a transcendent sense of spiritual poise and power.”