I've been walking in my sleep

Let's pretend we welcome Daylight Saving Time.  While we're at it, we could pretend it is still the latter half of the 20th century in which we were, those of us of a certain age, young and watched The Monkees.  Their "Daydream Believer" has never lost relevance for me, likely never will.

I was elbowed yesterday by a Facebook post about the importance of dreams and how we can begin to unravel their wisdom by starting to write down as much as we remember upon waking each morning.  Don't try to make sense of them, the article cautioned, almost promising that as we become more consistent with recording them, our recall will widen and the messages they convey will be less obscure.  Decades ago I kept a dream journal until the book intended for the purpose was filled.  I was more practiced in the art of remembering and imagine I can become that way again.

Dreams and their waking counterparts, daydreams, tell us stories about ourselves.  That the telling may be in code is not intended to keep us from their secrets.  We are meant to understand and inhabit the stories, their value all the greater for the work they ask of us.  Dream on, my sisters and brothers.

Maura O'Connell sings

Irish singer Maura O'Connell, born in County Clare.

My favorite Maura O'Connell song, why not start with it?

From the writings of William Butler Yeats.

With Nanci Griffith singing harmony.

When Kasey Chambers met The Sopranos and other musical delights

As my son had never seen the first three seasons of The Sopranos, I'd only seen each episode once and the whole series was being shown free on his Amazon Prime, we're watching it most nights.

I'd forgotten what a choice job they did of matching music to circumstances.  At the end of Episode 8, Season 3, came what I discovered is "The Captain," by Kasey Chambers.

In the way one thing anywhere on the interwebs leads to another came her duet with Ashleigh Dallas on "I'll Fly Away,"

which, in turn, brought me to Ms. Dallas' version of "Across the Great Divide," and I won't deny it gives me chills, as does her violin on the previous song.  I am a fool for harmony and a fiddle.

Here is another version of the late Kate Wolf's "Across the Great Divide," by Nanci Griffith from her tribute album, "Other Voices, Other Rooms," this time with Emmylou Harris and guitarists from Kate Wolf's band.  Some days, all we need is a whole lot of music and maybe a cookie, of the thin, Meyer lemon sort, from Trader Joe's.

Once in a very blue moon

Today (still Thursday in California) would have been my cousin Sheri's 64th birthday.  Her stained glass sun, created from a sketch of mine, is next to me in the dining room window every day as I write.  This afternoon South Pasadena had showers, then a thunderstorm, then pouring rain for more than half an hour.  After four weeks of heat and humidity and not a drop of the oft-mentioned "monsoonal flow" through our neighborhood, it was as fitting a birthday gift as I could imagine.  The LA Times this morning reported that in the past two days, New Orleans had an inch more rain than Los Angeles for its entire so-called rainy season.  Living in a thinly disguised desert, I view rain as a blessing, welcome it, especially when not predicted.

On the 31st, we can all frolic beneath the blue moon, the last until 2015.   Do we make a wish, plan a ceremony, eat cupcakes as an artist friend has announced?  It seems we are being called to watch the sky, even if just for a day.  I tend to watch it rather more often than that.  A rare summer storm may signify nothing, as may the blue moon of song and story.  Regardless, both are happenings outside the ordinary which remind me how fond I am of that which falls beyond the ordinary.