More Cosmic Dreaming - Under the Lyre

Two nights ago, I was sleeping on the sofa as I sometimes do, because it is near the fire and warmer, and I like the way the firelight dances on the other side of my closed eyelids.

I was half awoken by the voice of a large Italian man standing over me. He stroked my hair and spoke: something which sounded to me like 'sotto lura' or 'sotto lira.'

As soon as I awoke the next morning I was searching for meaning in the phrase, but could come up with nothing other than that 'sotto' means under or beneath.

This morning, because this dream has so puzzled me (I know virtually no Italian), I continued my search with Google Translator. And this is what I found, and heard. Press the 'Listen' button in the lower right corner of the box.


Sotto il lira - under the lyre.

Interestingly, my real name is Laura, which has always been translated as 'crown of laurel leaves.' But I wonder if the name given to me by my dream visitor holds the truest meaning.

Cosmic Dreaming

Early last year, when my grandson was still a gleam in his father's eye, I had a dream. In it, I walked through the woods just outside the front door of my home, carrying my grandson and telling him some tall tale about the dinosaurs who roamed the place millions of years ago. He interrupted and said, "Grandma, I don't like dinosaurs." Flash forward to yesterday evening, when I was holding my two-week-old grandson on my lap and watching him sleep. (Actually, I was trying to wake him up.) And his grandpa was trying, too, by tickling his belly. Easton made a frown and I said, "Stop that. Easton doesn't like tickles. And he doesn't like dinosaurs." Everyone laughed and someone asked, "How do you know he doesn't like dinosaurs?" I said, "Because he told me in a dream." And I looked back down at Easton and a smile lit up his face and he chuckled in his sleep, as if we had just shared the biggest private joke in the Universe.