Visions of Half Sleep

Every first-time parent has had dreams full of death and failure. A man hold his newborn baby and is filled with joy and love looking into her eyes. He notices that the blanket around her has become slack, that she seems to be shrinking in his hands, growing lighter. He places her carefully onto the table to consider what to do next and, is she turning a little bit yellow at the edges? Now maybe a shimmer of gold? She is small enough now to hold in one hand and then even smaller. Gold covers her from head to...

There are mysteries everywhere we look. IN languages we cannot read hide people struggling to bee heard. In the touch of a hand a vocabulary strange and familiar, ancient and as yet unread. These stories and poems show the past creating each future while each future creates the present moment, the place where we all wonder how any of this came to be. Grievances that start in childhood stretch into infinity as the distance between lifelines grows with each passing moment. Hey, Cool J, want to go to the movies? Ah, you got a boyfriend—I know all about it...

The work we do each day—typing a little paragraph explaining a podcast episode, paving a highway, cutting into veins to insert a camera—provides a way to guess that our lives might have meaning. Holding a stick and expecting it to find water is another way to search for meaning. Convincing someone else that by holding a stick you can direct them to water—that’s another kind of work. Holding a stick, walking to the squishiest place and declaring water present and asking for money, that’s a thing, too. And here’s a poem about an onion, which...

It’s the changes that get us, the disruptions to our well-planned lives that sneak up behind us and shove us to the ground. Inside a classroom growing up is full of perils, as are first dates. Growing older with adult children brings nothing but regret and sadness—if you look at things from a particular perspective. And losing a loved one at a bad time and for a dumb reason—the people left behind to figure out how to take the next step and the next step—going out like it is the most normal thing it has ever bee...

We try to detect patterns in a world that has none. We look for meaning in the inchoate roar of everyday life. Fragments of memories orbit and refract; they reflect the dim light we shine at them and spray stars onto the ceiling of lonely rooms. A car passes on the street outside. The window does not move and yet it dances also across the ceiling. I am the frame of reference of the whole universe. The rest moves in relation to me. It makes we wonder how I keep from going under. 

"God the Father" "Improvisation" "D...

The longest journeys begin in an inward direction. East west north south don’t begin to tell the story of anyone’s most personal and most important odyssey. Here, then, is the fifth direction: sisa. (I used Google Translate for “inward” and found the shortest word out of the twenty or so languages I tried. Or maybe the people of northern Scandinavia just have a lot of time during those long winters for journeys sisaward and need a quick way to explain. “Where were you all afternoon, Jovnna?” “Sisa, my dear Gutnel.” “Ah.”)      

"Joey Gets a Gut Feeling" -- with "Killar...

When you’ve lived longer than most, you realize that the things we leave behind don’t tell the story we’d like them to. The inchoate fragments of the mosaic we though we were assembling fall to the ground when we grow too weak to carry our building materials.  Survivors—even loved ones—hold inscrutable relics for a few beats and then move on. The guy at the donation door at Goodwill receives it all with a thin smile and an offer of a receipt. But, really, a receipt for what?   

"Divide" "Down in the Flats" and "Germinat...

There are remnants wherever you look. If you live far from others, you seen the leaves of last year becoming the soil of the next century and beyond. In cities and towns, whole buildings fall into disuse, and the only thing they’re good for is shade on a hot day. Broken relationships leave shady spots, too, those oases of unforgiveness that leave one cool and out of the blinding sunshine of truth. 

"The Telulah Park Locomotive" -- with "Monophony" by John Mayrose

"Desire the River" -- with "2-6-20-1" by Tad...

What causes us to seek the company of others? I write this alone but with the din of voices outside somewhere—a neighbor or a passerby.  I am not lonely, but I know that I will seek out others soon enough and if they provide nutrition or protection. This episode approaches the need we all have for company in all circumstances. Even as I write this, I image you, the one who is reading this, and my heart feels little less afraid. 

 "Rainy Night Aubade" and "Pillar of Salt" -- with "Five Quarter Tone Etudes 4" by Ed Marti...

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 episode plays with them.   

"Roused from a Sleep Newtonian" -- with "Closing" by Paul Dietrich

"i. e. Got Me a Girl" and "In Lines Li...

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 seek out new life and new civilizations, if we embrace the unknown as the greatest life force for good, then we live in peace and non-judgmental harmony with our neighbors. As you’ll hear i...

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 would notice my rumblings or my fiery exhalations. I’d be just another sensory input for people beyond the ability to care.  

"Dragons in Subway Tunnels"...

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 different but unable to articulate how it might matter. There are many ways to think about this, one of the many...

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 winds exceeding 110 miles per hour. Not everything that perished in that fire died that day. There are ghosts. There are always ghosts.

Track Listing

“Father Jack and the Book of D...

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 rumination seeps like osmosis through his thoughts from swamp to bathtub as his house empties and darkens for the evening. The...

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 have surpassed you, and everyone knows it. The things we do in life that cannot be taken back leave wounds no single lifetime of good deeds can expunge. Yes, you sh...

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 walks the Lake Michigan coastline heading north in search of a place where change — with its new lives and new deaths — spares those for whom the passage of time has be...

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? These stories and poems build a home for the unsettling dreams that will arrive any moment now…

Story | Music Track Listing

Open...

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 to find. “Decomposition” and “Dream” are about tearing down the structures we build each day so that we can sleep under the night sky. Late at night, when our heads find the...

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 more time, time to find the commitment and dedication he always thought might be coming. He did what he had to do while waiting...