Profoundly Quiet

That dream again, where I'm on top of some very rickety scaffolding. I was focusing lights for an opera, Peter Grimes, by the look of things. Outdoors, elaborate set, the east coast above Gloucester, Massachusetts, because the beach was all rocks as it only is above Cape Ann, and there was a good breeze off the Gulf of Maine. I woke at the penultimate scene, when things started shaking badly, sat up starker's. I hate this dream, whatever it purports to mean. I go outside to pee, then get a dram of the creosote single malt and roll a smoke. I'd had the AC on earlier, to cool Black Dell, but before I went to sleep on the sofa, I'd turned it off and opened some windows. Quiet as a tomb except for a layer of bug sound that is exactly like, is, in fact, white noise. I have to flip the breaker on the fridge, and put a post-it on Dell's screen to flip it back on before I go back to sleep. Sit on the stoop for quite a while, in the dark, and listen. Hot and humid. On a whim, I play Edgar Meyer's transcription of The Cello Suites for double bass, and it's a revelation. The greatest music ever. At one labile point I'm actually crying. The depth, the sonority, is such that I fall into a state, a cone of attention, where my personal failures stack up to define me. We learn, of course, by failure. Only Bach makes me think about faith. Not quite true, those miniature Iris do the trick, and that tubular fog on the Ohio, but you know what I mean. We're defined by what we've done. Apa Sherpa has climbed Everest 21 times, a lady Sherpa, never going below 20,000 feet, achieved the summit four times last year. Last Sunday 238 people walked on top of the world. May is the climbing season. Ciudad Blanca, that new technique, LIDAR I think they call it, light reflecting radar, has exposed a vast civilization in what is now rain forest. Raised roads and temples. People populated this area before it became a forest. Wow, I have to realign my South American history. We were there much earlier, pre-pre-Colombian. I have a theory. Liz says I always have a theory. Yesterday was all about the new directors, walked around, sat around, ate lunch together, then the impromptu cocktail party. Enjoyed myself, and I do love women in summer dresses and sandals. It's the ankles that get to me. Chatted with nearly everyone (a couple of dozen people) and I knew everyone there. I was designated as last to leave, and I'd had a few drinks, so I stayed in town. Dined on strawberries and grapes and brie, excellent crackers and Melba Toast. Clay had gone over to Kroger for the finger food and helped him carry it in, found myself staring at a box of Melba Toast wondering who the hell Melba was. 1897, Dame Nellie Melba, an Australian opera singer, who had a stomach upset, and Escoffier prepared it for her, also Peach Melba. Wanted to get home, because of forecast thunder showers, and I needed to harvest some rain, so after an early lunch with TR (I just had a draft, as I had food at home that needed to be eaten) I headed back toward the ridge. On the way I started thinking about 'posturing', what some of my actor friends call 'indicating', where the acting shows through. Going to a cocktail party, for instance. What you think you see, and what you think you get. Serving up a line of talk. Good though, because we need a line of connection, between the directors, the board, and the patrons. So it's nice to mill around and introduce people. I'm good at this, though I hate to admit it. I was in the pub, the other day, talking with Barb about staffing problems, and how you planned for the unexpected. This constitutes most of the known universe.