The night of the Full Moon (toward the end of last week), I had a series of significant dreams, mostly involving me going to a strange place to help a bunch of people put on a musical. That morning, I woke up to find that family members had been trying to contact me (through ordinary telecommunications methods) about an opportunity to travel, work and learn for two months this summer. A sibling of mine is working for a light opera company in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and I’ve somehow been wedged into the scenario to play the part of somebody on the tech crew. I’ve never worked in theatre before, unless playing guitar in pit band for Godspell in high school counts. I don’t think it does.

Having immersed myself already for the past year in the subject matter of theatre, performance, and the like, it seems like a natural and well-timed move to go and learn about some of these things from a whole new group of people operating in a different modality. Plus I get paid enough to set me up for my next move and my room and board is covered. I’ll be keeping my place here in Baltimore paid up during my absence so that I have somewhere to come home to. Though, I expect to only be in Baltimore another two months or so after I come back - towards the end of August. My plans beyond that I expect to shape up over the coming weeks as several different factors come into play.

I’ll miss my juggling club, and playing songs up at Rancho Grande on Wednesday nights with everybody, and riding around on my bike and just generally goofing off with some of my oldest and best friends. But, as always, getting a chance to cut out of town for a while, learn new things (the itinerant scholar in me), meet some new faces and hang out with family will allow me to sort through and further refine all the amazing things I’ve learned in Baltimore since arriving here last October. I’ve had some of the most fun of my life over this past year, and it’s a funny-feeling time to be leaving town, because a lot of different things are really starting to go my way. But as a friend of mine said, “It’s a good time to miss Baltimore.”

So I guess it’s time to play the Fool again. Massachusetts is the state where I was born - so I know I’ll be in good hands, and my grandmother once lived across Buzzard’s Bay from where I’ll be staying. Plus I’ve been listening to Springsteen’s early beach operas all month in unknowing preparation. Been tricked by that old Full Moon before, but I’m beginning to understand how the cycle works and harmonizing my songs with its.