That night I drank the golden tea and did not cough in my sleep. I dreamed of a long train of migrants walking from one end of the earth to another, far beyond the ruins of what had once been home. They walked through deserts and barren plains and strangling wetlands where wide ribbons of inedible algae, brighter than the Persian sky, wrapped around their ankles. They walked dragging their banners behind, clothed in the fabric of lamentations, seeking the extended hand of humankind, shelter where none was offered. They walked where wealth was shuttered within works of architectural mastery, immense boulders encasing modern huts ingeniously obscured by dense indigenous vegetation. The air within was dry, yet all doors, windows and wells were hermetically sealed as if in anticipation of their coming. And I dreamed that all their hardships were viewed on global screens, personal tablets and two-way wristwatches, becoming a popular form of reality-based entertainment. All watched dispassionately as they tread unforgiving ground, hope bleeding into hopelessness. Yet all sighed with emotion as art flourished. Musicians rose from their torpor composing mesmerizing works of symphonic suffering. Sculpture sprang as if from the covered ground. Muscular dancers depicted the torments of the exiled, rushing the length of great stages as if overcome by nomadic futility. All watched, riveted, even as the world in its dependable folly kept spinning. And I dreamed the monkey leapt upon it, this mirrorball of confusion, and broke into dancing. And in my dream it was pouring, as if with a heartbroken vengeance, yet unconscious of the weather I went out without a raincoat, walking all the way to Times Square. People were gathering before a mammoth screen watching the Inauguration and a young lad, the very same who had alerted the populace that the emperor had no clothes, cried: Look! He’s back again, you let him out of the bag! The festivities were followed by a new installment of a reenactment of the trials of the migrants. Wooden boats streaked in gold lay abandoned in the shallow waters. A gilded mascot descended, screeching and flapping its monstrous wings. Dancers writhed in agony as barbs of compassion pricked their feet. The onlookers wrung their hands in sympathetic fury, yet this was nothing to those walking the earth, the circumference killers, tracing words in the windswept sand. Portray us if you must, but we are the living thorns, the pierced and the piercing. And I awoke and what was done was done. The human chain was in motion and their voices played in the air like a cloud of ravaging insects. One cannot approximate truth, add nor take away, for there is no one on earth like the true shepherd and there is nothing in heaven like the suffering of real life. ~Patti Smith, The Year of the Monkey

Sirens and gunshot firecrackers. Like baby cries, I hear sirens and shots even in the shower where my ears should be safe, the sounds burned into my earmind. This will not end, there is no going back, if you think a vaccine tomorrow would stop it you're wrong. Smith, one of the most obvious natural witches, began dreaming of this in 2016 and published the dreams in 2019. The virus is a manifestation (only one) of the "wavering illness air" blanketing us, a curse that we now cannot uncast. Once a curse is alive, it unfurls until it is done. You'll see.