Bear cubs incubate while the mother is in hibernation. They emerge into the world of the den and her vast folded softness, to grope and squeeze and touch noses and suckle. All the while the steel gray sky and savage winter storms press in upon them.

......................................................................

He is dying - metastases in his thigh, his lungs, his brain perhaps - not having made it quite to eighty. He knew it when he dreamed about the strap breaking as he tried to play the saxophone. Now I am dreaming of a young man, still dying, but with a head full of hair and a sparkle in his eyes, grabbing me mid-waist and whirling us into a dance.

Every January the same tumble: colors drain, a fog settles between my senses and the objects they try to discern. And I can't help but contemplate that I was born in January when this collapse occurs. I don't feel like a spirit eager to lap up the stuff of things incarnate. All the love (carnal, of course), the greed, the hate, the passion even seem like such an overwhelming effort. Such a distraction from the sweet inner silence.

There is nothing like a bout of insomnia lasting three consecutive nights or so to strip the psyche of faith. Or perhaps what I call faith is illusion, and it is the illusory projections of future joy, happiness and satisfaction that are purified. All well and good. I need to discover whether I can experience beauty in the midst of this zombie-like drift among very-present shadows. If beauty can be discerned, then perhaps the other stuff is an illusion and good riddance.