In the pre-dawn mist....

Believe, my friends and classmates, this is a true story. Twice I have meet magic in the hour before dawn, this is a story of the first. In 1982 I was entering my sophomore year at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Having spent most of the night in my studio space in the fine arts building, I needed to stretch my legs and pick up a pack a cigarettes. The nearest source of smokes - a vending machine at the Fair Oaks Motel - was just two blocks from school. The weather was chilly and moist, a heavy fog lay like cotton candy and swirled around my legs as I walked.

MCAD, The Children's Theater Company and the Minneapolis Institute of Art form an aesthetic triangle on the south side of town and the MIA stoop seemed a good place to have a quiet smoke. As I finished, dawn began to arrive. A soft pink glow infused the vapor as I turned the corner. Standing quit clearly in front of the Children's Theatre was a unicorn. Looking at me as I looked at him, clearly neither of us expecting the other. I was to find this small, cream colored beast was know to his friends as Lancelot. A single, straight horn grew from above his brow ridge directly in the center of his forehead. His companion (whose name is lost to time) informed me they had arrived earlier than expected to an event being held at the Theatre. After hanging out for a bit on a grassy bit of lawn, the man went over to the motel for a cup of coffee and Lancelot and I shared a cigarette. Of course I smoked mine; he ate his.

After going home and getting some sleep, I awoke wondering if the chance meeting could have been a dream. It seemed almost certainly a product of paint fumes and exhaustion. Until I opened my Camel's and found one single, wavy, golden, wiry hair.