THANKFUL FRIDAY

The other night, I had a dream that made me believe in reincarnation and past lives. It was set in the 1800s, in a small but busy Western town owned by a shrewd businessman/rancher. This shrewd man had a gaggle of sons that he had spread out around town bullying people into order. No one sneezed in this town without the man’s permission. One of the sons, who’s legitimacy was always in question, wasn’t quite as bad his brothers but managed to get himself into a number of scrapes. On time in particular, he found himself being called out to a quick draw. All the people gathered along the street, half hidden by various barrels and carts. I was in that crowd and I looked over to see a boy raise a pistol to shoot the not so legitimate son. He had been hired by the gunslinger who had called for the draw. I jumped from my hiding place and tackled the boy. We wrestled, rolling in the dust, and I was finally able to grab the pistol free just in time to hear a gunshot. The shot had been fired from the son’s pistol, killing the gunslinger. I shoved the boy aside and said “I hope the penny he gave you was worth it.” I started to pull myself up from the ground when the son walked over and helped me up, dusting dirt from my skirt. He placed the palm of his hand on the side of my face and we looked into each others eyes. He asked me if I was alright and I nodded my head.

Then I woke up.

Their story rolled around in my brain for the rest of the day. I decided the son’s name was Chett and there was something between the two of us even though I was not the me I am today. The story I imagined for the two of them/us transcended generations and was filled with love, heartache and disappointment, but also redemption. My story travels from a dusty town in the west to a chateau of a winery in rural France. It is filled with big world/small world connections. It is an epic tale and one that feels very very real, even though I know it is a fiction of my own making. This is not the first time a dream has led to a novel in my head, nor is it the first time a dream has made me think about who I was in the past. Though, I’m not about to go all Shirley MacLaine over here. Except sometimes I really do think Pepaw is inside Josephine somewhere. I am sure these dreams have more to do with tapping into the vivid imagination section of my brain. I love it when they show up in my sleep because that tells me that my vivid imagination is still in there somewhere. It may be buried under a lot of useless crap, but it’s there. I wake up from these reincarnation dreams inspired to do something. To write. To sketch out a scene. To create.

I’ll be honest. Those last three things have been really hard for me to do in the past few months. Work has been so busy. Weekends have been booked up with activities. The Fortune Cookie diary has a fine layer of dust on it. None of this is bad. Well…Thursday was bad. Thursday was a broken microscope and cat puke on my bed bad, but all in all I’m busy doing fun things. It just has left me with little brain space for creativity. So little space, that I thought I was all done. These kinds of dreams tell me that I am far from done. There are stories and pictures locked inside me. Enough to fill pages.

Enough.