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Although I still await the official arrival of the midyear solstice, "every sign close to nature" (as Sting eloquently sang) points to madame summertime's arrival. Like trumpeteers before her approaching carriage, a violent summer thunderstorm shook Le Cottage Bleu with its mighty percussion during the hours preceding daylight this morning. In response, I sat straight up and flailed my appendages like a harpooned octopus, startling my poor husband straight out of a rather enjoyable fishing dream -- for this, I feel terribly guilty. He so rarely enjoys dreaming. Nine nights out of ten, he's usually arguing with his mother within his tortured head.

I, on the other hand, enjoy the luxury of experiencing dreams that are mostly pleasurable, if not simply curious.... I often dream of houses, lands, forests, rooms -- spaces to occupy and wear like a sweater jacket, meaning that their character remains, even as I take it on and mold it to my proportions. Many times an object or an idea from a dream will hook me, and suddenly I have the image permenantly affixed within my head and I'm set on a mission to retreive or create the incarnation of the dream-thing. Awainting in the cluttered storage facility of my mind are a hand-carved stone fireplace mantle, an open-air library, a rough-hewn shipwood table, an underground Spanish mission with tiles and candleabras worked into the walls of its catacombs, an old crone's house where vegetables stew and herbs and roots are dried from the pine rafters... this is the stuff of my summer reveries. Fortunately, I need not wander far from home to see them realized.

Our marriage home has become an other-world reflection of these subconscious desires; under the direction of husband-dear -- who inherited from his maternal grandmother's discernment for visual harmony -- he and I have created a living space that have incorporated many of these elements, even without him realizing it! So many of the things we've chosen as a couple to bring into our home point toward his eye for beauty and my preference for whimsy. The little wooden and plaster fat birds peeking from random corners of my kitchen belong to that dream world. So does the recycled church furniture. A library -- open air or not -- is a completely achievable goal, and we're well on our way. Even the pond concealed by a curtain of shaggy adolescent pines has been a visiting-portal for so many of the places I've taken comfort in, even if they only exist in my imagination.

I'm grateful for the fruits of an overactive imagination. I think it's a gift to have such a lens through which to view my life. I know that it pleases the Creator when gifts He has bestowed are developed with the intention of furthering His work, yet many people might not place nightly appearitions within this category, considering it a rather spooky and intangible. But I do. I told one of our "kids" Wednesday night that sometimes I fail to see God's hand in what I've done until I look back upon it and am able to identify his fingerprints all over what I believed was my personal masterpiece. Manipulating one's environment to reflect a heart that rejoices in all that God has given can be a way of "multiplying talents" (Matt. 25:13-30).

"....whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor. 10:31)

"I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going?
And this he told me
Im going on down to yasgurs farm
Im going to join in a rock n roll band
Im going to camp out on the land
Im going to try an get my soul free..."

Had a batch of oddly hippie-flavored dreams last night...For some reason, I think that's a sign that I need to start cooking homemade bread and laying plans for spring's herbal pot gardening (pot as in containers -- not the wacky tobaccy). Or maybe the Time Life Flower Power CD collection infomercials that I stay up for with increasing frequency have penetrated my consciousness and are now eating their way out of my brain like an R. Crumb character with a violently wide mouth....

"...Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I dont know who l am
But you know life is for learning..."

Every morning is a new mystery to solve. This morning has been no different (other than the disadvantage of waking up too late to imbible my routine cup of Folger's).
For the past few years, I've periodically scoured the 'net for any random news pertaining to a certain residence I visited on the outskirts of Woodstock, New York, back in 2003. I don't know why the memory of that day has wound such an air of dazzling interest about itself. I dream about the house constantly. Last night, I had one of those dreams.

Back during the time of my visit, my (now ex-)husband and I were tooling around with a creative pirate who, for privacy's sake, I'll call Fff. Fff did a little bit of everything. Wait, scratch that understatement. He did a whole lot of everything. I mean, the fella was busier than a hygenically-challenged 14-year-old boy in a pimple-poppin' contest. I was completely enamoured of him. He was everything I wanted to be when I grew up: freewheelin', uber-able, with a roster of incredible lifetime experiences that read like a rock star's list of conquests (back when rock stars were puckish demigods).

On that particular day, Fff and I departed New Jersey, plotting our course north to Woodstock, New York. Ever since I was a counterculture-minded teen, I hoped and prayed that one day that I would make my way up to two places: Bleecker Street, NYC, and Woodstock. Since I had quickly quenched my bohemian longing to play the same West Village stages as Dylan & Mitchell as soon as I disembarked from my big yellow taxi, my first chance at visiting Woodstock was the last dream I had to cross off my list. When I caught wind of Fff's intention to survey an estate which had been bequeathed to his client, a well-known author of children's fantasy (listen to me! authors! estates! I sound so Jane Austen!), I begged to hitch a ride in his big white van and accompany him. The man was not fond of telling his little poppet NO, so off we went.

The town we arrived in was not the glorified be-in of my youthful imagination! It was instead just like every career tourist town in the U.S. -- hokey gifts, overpriced candles, steakhouses with special regional names for the dipping sauce. Meh.

We continued through town and down the highway, where we turned off at a large house situated just off the road, surrounded by a tangle of trees. From the outside looking in, the place was everything I would ever want a home to be -- full of oddly-situated rooms stacked three high, with ancient windows that rattle when the wind feels mischevious.

Inside, there were books in every place a book could possibly be. There was also clothes, soiled linens, and the leavings of what must've been the previous three weeks' dinner scattered about the house like dog droppings. Fascinating, but yick.
(As we picked through the leavings, Fff explained that the caretakers of the recently deceased had practically set up camp in the poor victim house and had used it as their own personal rubbish bin. In a way, I suppose I did gain a wee peek into the Woodstock festival on my trip, because the shape the house was in perfectly mirrored pictures I've seen of the monumental trash heap that remained after the Love Generation loved 'em and left 'em.)

Fighting our way upstairs against the tidal wave of clothes and random refuse littering the staircase, we came upon a diamond mine: the attic. Behind a scarred wooden door, we discovered stacks of yellowed music scores, scraps and scribbles of handwritten stories, and a treasure trove of books older than my grandparents' relationship. Absently, allowed my hand to flit over stacks of dusty hardbacks and pick up a random volume. It was a copy of The Hobbit. Hey, it was something I was familiar with! What's the chances, right? I slowly fingered through its delicate pages to the publishing information, where I received the shock of my life. It was a FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING copy. Holy schmoses! I revealed my discovery to my companion, who rejoyced in its finding as well.

I heard later after our grand adventure that the book I randomly discovered was sold for a prince's ransom and helped to pay for the cleanup and presentation of the home, which I believe was eventually sold.
After years of wondering whatever happened to all the random pennings, I recently read on another blogger's site that the papers were of scholarly interest and are currently being sorted through and shipped out to a university in Boston, where men with unkempt facial hair and musty clothing will sort through them and exclaim "aha!" to themselves while tapping thoughtfully upon their pipes....

"We are stardust,
Billion year old carbon..."