In a mood like this . . .

. . . there are only two things to do. Smoke, and listen to Elvis Costello.

I adore this man.

Specifically, tonight it's ONLY Blood and Chocolate, an album that took me a year and a half to get into. This happens with Costello. There's a dark, boozy, anxious, sedate, dark country road in my past, in Iowa City, when only All This Useless Beauty would do. Literally. I was physically incapable of listening to ANYTHING else.

Tonight, I have woken up from the most beautiful dream.

I'm learning that the biggest things can happen in the tiniest, most intimate and impossible spaces. These spaces are dreams when we are asleep, but when they spill over into real life . . . you become a sleepwalker. You move through the day, longing for your little spaces, perfect little pockets of play in a tapestry of work.

Did I love the dream itself? Or was it just that I loved the idea that the dream might not actually fade in daylight, or in the scope of what is possible? The former is more likely, and the latter is what will help me stop chiding myself that I am smart enough to have known better. Maybe it's about the difference between faith and stupidity. I like to think that I am learning to be faithful, and that I am not just perennially stupid.

The worst part is that I find myself finding hope. Well, looking for it. I'm too smart to delude myself into thinking I've FOUND hope, but I am faithful enough to look for it. Can I just go back to sleep now, and return to my dream? Probably not. After all, I've been trying to wake up.

But I know myself, and I'll dream again tonight. Maybe it's a new dream, and maybe it's the residue of the old one, but something will be there. And I'll be waiting for it.