Occasionally the California Coast sleeps in during the May Gray/June Gloom and has this recurring dream.

She sees a distant marine layer and no other clouds in the bright clear sky. She sees the shade of an old and twisted eucalyptus. The tree itself- invasive, and beautiful, and loved- a rare combination indeed.

She sees the memories of her adolescence, the old rail, the lifeline that connected her various towns and settlements when she was just coming of age and didn’t know the difference between a scoundrel and a gentleman.

She sees the running barbed wire fence placed to keep the cattle in place, another reminder of her adolescence when shots fired from a rider on horseback could signal fear, or theft, or love, or life, or all of them at once.

She sees a couple of painters standing over this vista scribbling away at their canvas, while sipping cold beers as a herd of cattle is moved down the road behind them.

In a moment of lucidity, she wakes within her dream to wonder what it means. She asks a man who smiles beside an old faithful Toyota truck and offers her a beer as well. It is then she hears the answer coming from the open cab of the truck and spoken to the wind through the crackling voice of a young Bob Dylan.

-Entry on May 17, 2018