A Midsummer Night's Dream

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact."

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

When Theseus says these words to Hippolyta in the play at his wedding, he is tolerating her reaction to the strange romantic doings of the human and ethereal spirits in the woods. I like to think the lines apply to all of us who find July a time to moon gaze at night, read entertaining novels in the afternoon, and craft a few poems whenever the mood strikes.

In this fanciest of faery tales, we find a way to enter the creative state, if only for a few hours and spend time imagining a dream that blends reality and imagination. What a wonderful way to look at the creative process. For writers must be pragmatic as well as dreamers. We toil away at our tales with hope and aspiration even as we understand the grind and the very real obstacles to publication. In these most unsettling of times, the lure of fantasy is compelling.

This midsummer month I fancy as a cup filled to the brim but not yet spilling over. Some harvest is ready, but most waits a while longer to be reaped. The days are inching shorter, but the light continues to linger, marking the evening sky with glorious color. The moon, when it rises, invites this 'lunatic' to admire its passage from new to full, awed by the pull it exerts on all things planetside. The lover in me embraces the many ways we love each other and the world, and the poet seeks an outlet for those sensations so deeply human but so often unutterable. What does it mean to be human? How do we prove our humanity? What part does imagination play in being human? For when the fanciful and the real collide, will one overpower the other?

So, from the Bard I travel in my musings to Jefferson and Adams and Monroe and those who crafted the document that outlines our Republic. The Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." If my pursuit of Happiness includes my need to write my truths in whatever form I can, then I must not deny the dream that powers my reality. I must follow my passion, allowing it to reveal itself in time.

Now I jump to Abba and the "Dancing Queen," a song that played onboard during one of my travels throughout the Mediterranean, where several of my shipmates joined me in the musical revels. Like Shakespeare's Fairies, we left the real world for one of fancy and dreams. I believe we all need those moments in our lives. May you dream on this July, allowing your own lunatic, loving, poetic self to dance to the tunes you hear!