The moon is full, and has brought with it a swath of unsettling, vivid dreams. The night before last, I had a realistic dream about two big black dogs in the driveway outside the place where I�m house-sitting. I love dogs, but I was scared of them, and more frightened when a third black dog, twice as large and with malevolent yellow eyes, joined them and growled at me, advancing, scaring me so much that I woke up. Looking it up in my dream dictionary, I see that black dogs indicate depression, ferocity, the negative elements of one's life.

Dogs don�t make frequent appearances in my dreams, unlike say, bridges, the ocean, tsunamis, or the belief that I have the ability to write a hit Broadway musical (Opening tonight! �The Rubik�s Mutineers!� The thrilling tale of a group of friends who, disgruntled at their collective inability to solve the Rubik�s Cube, stage a revolt, complete with elaborate dance numbers!)

When I came in this morning, my boss, Mr. Paul, called from his office, "So, Violet, how was your weekend? Did you have any more dreams about Jonathan Richman?" Oddly, at that very moment, I'd been thinking about a vivid dream I had the previous night, in which Jonathan appeared in a passing parade and sought me out to direct a verse of his song "Vincent van Gogh" specifically to me.

"Well, have you heard about the painter Vincent van Gogh?
He loved color and he let it show."

(He sang more, but in the interest of brevity, I'll move on.)

"I did!" I answered, walking into my boss's office, and explained the dream in a nutshell. He rolled his eyes.

"Did I ever tell you I had a dream about Jonathan before?" I asked, and he said no. "So... why did you ask me that?" He rolled his eyes again and said, "You're just getting so predictable!"

Apparently so. In fact, I wasn't going to mention the dream here, but when Mr. Paul brought it up, I thought the coincidence warranted at least a brief mention which, typically, I will drag out into many unnecessary paragraphs.

So, I will admit it, Jonathan Richman is a periodic dream visitor. I know enough about dream interpretation to recognize that he is a symbol for something, but it�s still kind of cool when he shows up, like, Hey! Free concert! I think he represents creativity and independence, because those are the qualities I associate with him, and he generally appears when I�m considering a new artistic endeavor. When I initially began dreaming about him, at a time when I was coming out of a long bout of creative inertia, he was onstage and I was in the audience, invisible to him. Once I started to be productive, he�d show up from time to time, on stage, and I�d be up there, too. If we were both onstage, he could see me, and if we were both in the audience, he could see me, but if he was onstage and I was in the audience, I was invisible.

Last night�s dream was different in that I was standing on the side of the road, in a rustic village. The road was paved with cobblestone, and wound up through the town in irregular curves. A parade was going by, or maybe it was more of a caravan. There were carts pulled by donkeys, and people walking. There were no floats, but certain people were honored, and they got to ride on wagons. Jonathan was walking, playing a guitar, and as he walked, he was looking around in the crowd for someone. When he saw me, he nodded in recognition, smiled, and came over to sing �Vincent van Gogh.� He sang it as if it were a message meant for me, like there was something in the lyrics he wanted me to understand. When he finished, he moved on, but other people I recognized in the parade waved and called to me as well, and wished me a happy birthday. (It is not my birthday, which is October 4th for those of you wishing to write it down.)

I had spent the whole weekend working on the never-ending mural, which I finally finished. I was immersed in paint, working under the sun for fifteen hours, and my clothes, when I was through, were covered in paint. I�m sun-burnt and my muscles ache, but I remember thinking as I worked, �I love this; I would be so happy if I could do this all day, every day.� I subscribe to the Jungian theory that each character in one�s dream represents an aspect of oneself, so I think that Jonathan, in this latest dream, represents an acknowledgement that happiness follows creativity, and that I�m on the right track.

And so imagine my surprise when upon looking in the dream dictionary, I learned that dreaming repeatedly about Jonathan Richman means that you�re �Craaaa-zy!!� Hm. How about that.

Star of the day. . .Joseph, who was sold into slavery