I actually sat down and began writing a new story last night. I have not written in over two months. (Forgive me Father for I have not written...the writer's confession).
WARNING:CONTENTS OF THIS PARAGRAPH MAY BE DISTURBING!
I was up until 12:30AM or a little later last night before deciding I really ought to get to bed. Being up that late allowed me to be the helpless witness to what sounded like a gruesome murder being committed in the neighbor's back yard. First there was the victim screaming, then the horrible grunts and snarling of the murderer. I'm thinking it was a rabbit that was killed. I'm hoping it wasn't one of the neighbor's cats. I do not want to walk around the hedge this morning and view the carnage. Dave can deal with it since it happened in his yard. I have no clue what sort of animal it was but I'm thinking, with the grunts, snorting and growls, it may have been a coy dog or coyote, not the fox, although the coyotes tend to howl in that bone-chilling, haunting manner to announce their kills and this beast was just that- a demonic sounding thing. Revere had been catnapping on the rug in front of the sink. He raised his head and looked at me through wide eyes. I said, "And that is exactly why you're stuck in the house, buddy. You'd be dead by now if you were an outdoor cat." Then I got up and closed the back door and locked it. It was just too creepy, gruesome and disturbing.
Sometimes the sounds of nature are not pleasant to hear, especially in the dead of night.
This morning we're having another beautiful summer day- bright sunshine, temps in the low to mid-80's. Birds are twittering outside the den window.
I was moving some binders around in the dining room earlier (between doing loads of laundry) and found one titled Fairydale on the spine. I opened it- and it was like discovering someone else's work amid my own. I didn't remember it at first. It slowly started coming back to me about five pages in. This is the kind of writer I am- my stories come to me like I am taking dictation directly from whatever Muse resides in that area of my brain where the ability to write originates. I've had this feeling before, of finding a story and having no recollection of having written it. It's more like a vague memory of typing it. It takes me awhile to remember what I've done. It's always a nice surprise to find a story you don't recall writing, like finding a diamond at the bottom of a treasure chest full of gold doubloons.
Okay- in a previous life I was a pirate. I don't want to get into that right now, but I do believe in reincarnation and clearly, vividly recall a few moments in one of my past lives. I had scarlet fever when I was six or seven years old. I remember the doctor paying a house call, jabbing me in the butt with a BIG needle (this was back in the day when they didn't have plastic syringes and ultra fine needles. This needle was killer huge! Stainless steel, requiring autoclaving to sterilize it- I would imagine, since those things were reusable. My Mom, an RN, had a little gold case in her top dresser drawer with a glass syringe and a set of steel needles from her nursing school days in the mid-50's. That case always fascinated and horrified me. It was mad scientist fascinating and revolting. Anyway- I had a high fever evidently and I, to this very day, distinctly remember turning my head toward my double closet doors, but the doors were not there. There was a room there, dark, lit by the fire burning in the stone fireplace. There was a woman sitting in a wooden chair in front of the fire, sewing. I instinctively knew her as my mother, even though she looked nothing like my real mother. She had blonde hair and was wearing a long dress. The room was sort of hazy with smoke from the fire. I was lying in a low bed near a taller bed. I was very sick. My mother turned her head and looked at me, told me to go back to sleep. It was a brief glimpse into the past. It wasn't until I was like in sixth grade when we studied the westward movement and the prairie that I recognized the home from my vision as a sod house, or soddy. It was both a physical and emotional jolt because seeing the picture of the sod house immediately brought that sick bed vision back crystal clear in my memory. The second jolt came when we went to Sturbridge Village and in the attic of one of the old houses there I saw a trundle bed for the first time and recognized it as the sort of bed I had been lying in in that vision. I had no idea such a thing existed until I saw it in real life at that museum- and it too gave me a physical start and verification that what I had seen was real. The low bed in my vision slid beneath the taller bed during the day to free up floor space. I am fifty years older than I was when I had that glimpse into a past life and it is still as vivid a memory today as it was back then.
My mother always said that her mother had told her, "If you don't get it right this time around you're sent back to try again." My French Canadian grandmother, great-grandmother and great-aunts and great-great grandmother were all possessed of pre-cognitive psychic abilities. My Mom was too, and so am I. I often feel a sense of deja-vu in my day to day life, because things happen that I already know will happen.
Therefore, I truly believe I was a pirate in a previous life because I have always been drawn to the sea, old ships, treasure chests, sword fights, old firearms...it all just seems so familiar to me. I think I died of scurvy or a respiratory illness, maybe tuberculosis. I have a terror of suffocation.
I am way out in left field this morning...time to reel myself back in and get some work done.
Maybe we'll run over to the Westfield Fair Grounds this afternoon for the Whiskers & Wheels car show to help support the Homeless Cat Project rescue shelter. If there's one thing John, Kelly and I love, it's an old car! Kelly dreams of having a house one day with a garage in which she can restore an antique/vintage automobile. (At least it's not a trolley!)
Enjoy the day!
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