I slept late this morning and before awakening I had a dream, one of the most beautiful, touching dreams I've ever had...and  I went, still filled with my dream, as always do, to do this reading which seems so much to me to be a physicalization of the message the dream brought, so here, instead of my interpretation of this reading, is the dream...see what it brings to you...

I am older than I am now, much older, and I am in a large group of people, most of them - but not all - mature individuals. We are all walking in the same direction, all bound for the same place, some sort of institute of advanced learning. It is winter and we are all bundled up. We seem to be near the edge of an ocean. The air is damp, smells lightly salty.

Next to me is a very large, very comfortable seeming man with black skin and greying hair. He has a protective air about him and I sense that he is there on purpose, as though someone has asked him to keep an eye on me. He seems familiar and I wonder aloud if we were in school (meaning The Philadelphia College of Art) together and he responds that he is much younger than I but that, yes, that is where he went to school.

We part at the entrance to the classroom area where we are given tags bearing the number of our practice rooms which are also the numbers of the place where we will hang our coats. I hang up my coat, and go to my room where a drum awaits. It is huge, the size of the largest timpani drum but in the style of something more like a djun djun. The sides, rather than being wood, though, are, like timpani, beautiful, polished metal. It sits on the floor, the top about level with my thighs. A large, very lightly padded stick sits on top.

I make a tentative strike at the center and the sound is exquisite. I strike again. I am impressed with myself. I see another stick and I begin to play and I am astounded at how well I can play. This is amazing. My play extends to the metal sides of the drum and the song gets richer and more complex and I am thinking, "This song will make a difference in the world. This song matters, somehow, to more than just me."

Then I recall that I am only a part of a much larger class and I stop, wondering if I have started too soon, gone too far, and if, perhaps, I need to explain myself and when I stop I hear all the songs from all the drums and realize that everyone's song is beautiful and that together they are even more beautiful. What I thought was amazing - my song - my tune - is nothing by comparison to the whole. I am humbled, thankful that no one noticed my egoic response to my own sound when I see, up at the front of the very large room in which all these small cubicles - all open, somehow, to see into - an older man stands, looking right at me, smiling gently in a way that says, "It's OK, we've all done it."

I smile back, step back into my playing space and melt into the whole becoming one with the most beautiful sound I have ever heard as thousands of individual drums each play their own very individual songs.

Happy waning moon in Libra. It is a beautiful day.