Thelonius the Monk

Thelonius was an improvisation. 

On the night of his tenth birthday, he dreamed a dream. In that dream he was laying on a woven mat made of millet stalks. He was looking up into a moonless, starlit night. He was listening to the sounds of other children playing in the fields around him.

Suddenly, clouds began to gather and swirl. They swirled until one cloud came to earth and touched the ground beside him. He lay there without moving, without making a sound. He watched the cloud and wondered, “Why has it come? What will it do?”

The children ran to the cloud. “Don’t touch it!” they yelled. “Aagh! It’s going to land on Thelonius!”

Land on Thelonius it did. It touched him on top of his head. It brushed against his forehead. He felt as if his grandma were kissing him with a light, sweet kiss. He was terrified and comforted at the same time.

He saw up into the swirling cloud and looked at an old wooden loft that was there. The loft was glowing with soft yellow light and reminded him of the light in the first moments of sunrise and the last moments of sunset. That soft yellow light was coming from stacks and stacks of freshly picked corn, stacks wrapped in summer green husks pulled halfway down the ears revealing whole, full kernels of corn.

A ladder was unfolding with a clickity, clackity, clunk to the foot of his mat. He wanted to climb the ladder, but he didn’t want to climb the ladder. All he could do was look through the swirling cloud up the ladder into the loft at the corn and feel a feeling that was a mixture of genius, beauty, wonder and joy.

An old black woman with hair as white as the inside of a baobab fruit and eyes as brown as the skin of a peanut descended the ladder and sat down at Thelonius’ left side. She leaned over him and placed her hand on his head, a hand that looked as worn and broken as a sandal that had walked over ragged rocky roads. She whispered in his ear with a voice that was quiet and kind.

“Thelonius, I’m giving you a gift. Contemplate the gift. Use the gift. Be the gift.”

She turned to climb the ladder.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Where are you going? Where did you come from? What gift did you give me? Why did you give it to me?”

She ascended the ladder and disappeared into the stalks of corn. 

The ladder folded with a clickity, clackity, clunk to the top of the loft. A strong wind blew against Thelonius’ face, blew so hard he closed his eyes tightly to keep the dust from blinding him. 

When he opened his eyes he saw his own room in his own hut in his own village. The cloud, the loft, the corn, the ladder and the woman were gone. The mysterious gift and unanswered questions remained. 

A kernel of corn and part of a husk lay on the wooden floor beside him.