Book of Dreams

So Yoga you've written (no, published) the kind of book I've dreamed a few times.

The dream went like this: I publish a book that can only be read once. Once, and with an expiration date. So, as you're reading it, you try to take it in. You try to remember everything you like about it.

But

*sometimes you are rushed, so you read quickly because you know it will disappear

*sometimes, while actually reading slowly and trying to remember it, you realize that reading in that way -- with a net aimed to trap -- is somehow impure. You're missing something central about the experience. So you stop trying to remember. You enjoy the process of words passing through you. Eventually, even, you enjoy the fact that you will never have to analyze or connect. Like a series of touches, the words caress, push, poke, knead, punch, play, tussle your hair.

*sometimes you start and then rush off and come back to find that the chapter you were reading is gone, so you fill in the blanks even if you don't really want to (and even if you do really want to)

*sometimes you start to copy the words, but you quickly erase them, this feels like hoarding a smile or a shooting star

Ultimately, this book is more "of a piece" with your own mind than most books because you make so much of it in your own mind. And you can't go back to something stable. You just have the static-y storage device of short term memory.

It's a voice in my head the way the announcer of old Celtics games is a voice in my head. The way my father's voice, coaching me around a track near dark, is a voice in my head. Or that woman hollering in the street back in 1991, some part of her all aflame with a wonder not made

but gifted

and then gone: a holy hole God leapt from.

This is a poem for William Byrd and an essay for you, tireless friend.
Honor us and all we've made and unmade
by never reading it again.