Stardust and Fairy Dust

Last night I dreamed that the vintage clothing spots in Kansas City had dried up. The stores had closed, or didn’t carry vintage anymore. I searched through various rooms, dismayed at the empty racks. Then I thought----“Oh that’s right. All the good stuff is in the basement.” But when I went down there, the hangars were bare. One of the shops was called The Black Rose. Knowing it had closed upset me. But then, I remembered Lawrence. A college town full of artsy types who would keep vintage stores in business. “I can go to Lawrence,” I thought. “Yes, Lawrence. That’s not too far.” I was so relieved.

Coming back from lunch yesterday, I drove past one of those big corporate lawns outside an office building. I saw two small clusters of people on the grass. A man was trying to walk from one group to the other carrying a spoon full of water. Oh Lord, I thought. Is that a team-building exercise?

I feel magical today. I am bespeckled with purple fairy dust. It’s in my fingernails and under my skin. I sprinkled purple glitter onto Lilah’s fairy wings, and sprayed her hair purple, to get her ready for her play. I was practically gassing her. Colored hair spray is toxic and nasty. Lilah made a graceful entrance, spinning onstage in her purple dress and silver slippers. She waved her wand and tantalized Pinocchio with the prospect of being a real boy. But first he had to meet her stringent requirements: be honest, respect and obey his father, and go to school. That’s a school play for you, always slipping in a plug for THE MACHINE.

Someone told me today that when her son was little she sang him the song "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell to help him go to sleep. She sang:

By the time we got to woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation

We are stardust

We are golden

We are billion year old carbon

And we got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

He's grown now, but not long ago he asked her to sing "the song about the planes turning into butterflies".