Since I got the flu, I’ve spent most of the day sleeping, and last night I went to bed at 7 p.m. Maria slept all through the night (she is still sleeping, which is good) but I can’t sleep like that, I woke up at 3 a.m., I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. I got my Iphone and logged onto Beats, the new Apple music streaming service I like a lot, and I decided to spend some time with Itzhak Perlman and the composer Vivaldi, and his very famous and beautiful “The Four Seasons.”

I went to “Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, “The Winter,” it seemed the right choice in this long, cold and beautiful season. The room was dark, Red slept on one side of the bed, Frieda on the other, I wiped Maria’s brow with a damp tissue, the only light in the room was the Iphone flickering off of the windows and the ceiling.

The music was beautiful. I felt as if I were riding on it. Medicated for my wracking and painful cough, I moved into a kind of twilight zone, a horizon zone I call it, in between sleep and wakefulness. The music was the perfect evocation of winter, cold at times, plunging at times, then soaring and full of hope and faith and promise – Spring always follows winter as light follows darkness, and lying in bed, I smelled the dirt in the Dahlia garden, the long and bright days, the photographer’s light, and I saw the bright colors of the flowers. Suddenly, Maria I were sitting in our Adirondack chairs, drinking tea, and then I was there alone, listening to music, sitting with Red.

In my dream, Lenore was there also but Simon was gone, consciousness is always fascinating to me, the unconscious has it’s own messages, it’s own sense of reality.  Fevers can be beautiful and transcendent sometimes. The music soared and fell, and I rose and plunged with it, a mystical kind of a roller coaster, I was transported into another place and time.

When I awoke, we had moved through the four seasons, I was listening to Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, “Summer.” It was light fresh, breezy, I had dozed through Spring, fevered and weak. I turned off the Iphone. I took my temperature with my new digital thermometer, and then Maria’s. Our fevers had broken, they were normal, I could almost smell Spring and touch it.

Her voice was back to normal, she was full of energy, plans, directives and ideas. I was happy to see her again, across this hazy plain. No more medicines today, I am glad I did not to go the emergency room, glad I did not go back to the doctor.

I’ve been to doctors plenty in these recent months, I have no trouble with it, but it is sometimes good to let the body do it’s work, it often will, given the chance. We have lost the idea that we can ever know our own bodies, or judge our own well-being. We depend on others to tell us how we are. I know how I am, sometimes all too well.  Each day I’ve gotten a bit better, and today, the sun came out in my head, and in Maria’s. The flu is not that big of a deal, but not that small a one either.

I was glad to sleep with Vivaldi, he is a healer too, and healing comes in many ways and forms.

I promised myself I would be well enough to attend the first rehearsal of my play, “Last Day at Maple View Farm,” and I made it.  I e-mailed David Snider, director of Hubbard Hall and told him I am fever-free, if it stays that way all day, I’ll be there. And it will. i can feel it.