Images And Intuition

This is part of my point of view exercise, taking someone else’s story and telling it through first person point of view. Hope you enjoy! xx

One weekend in 1980, I went to the movies by myself. It was freeing just to get out of the house in this strange town to which I’d been moved not even a year ago. A new movie starring an actress I’d loved in the seventies was playing. Both the star and the show in which she’d acted, set in a television station, reminded me of the place I had left. I was still achingly homesick for my friends, and decided that the movie might take my focus off my loneliness for a couple of hours. My husband was working, as usual. My three-year-old daughter was spending the weekend with my parents. It was just me. How I craved the anonymity and freedom of going wherever I wished.

The downtown looked so empty when compared to the city, but it had a bit of charm which i discovered inside theater’s lobby. It was old and vintage, predating the ones I’d grown up with as a child.

I was engrossed in the film when I noticed one of the characters, a teenage girl, tall with dark hair and large eyes. I instantly thought of my little daughter and suddenly imagined her looking much like this teenager when she grew older. Then I smiled at the thought of what they were probably doing now, she and my parents. They were most likely either winding down a trip to the mall forty-five miles away or planning a new one. My little girl had inherited the shopping craze from my mother. In the city, it had been her favorite thing to do, although she had not yet been two years old when we still lived there.

When the movie was over, I continued to think about that image that came to mind earlier. My intuition was always practically flawless. Suddenly I felt a little less lonely with the future in my fantasies.

Tuesday Trivia – Downton Abbey’s Lady Cora

The Downton Dame

Former X-Files star Gillian Anderson reportedly turned down the part of Lady Grantham, Lord Robert Crawley’s American heiress wife on Downton Abbey. The part ended up going to Elizabeth McGovern instead.  And we are so glad it all worked out.

Cora Crawley (née Levinson), Countess of Grantham (b. July 18, 1868 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is the daughter of Martha Levinson and the late Isidore Levinson (a dry goods multi-millionaire, the sister of Harold Levinson, the wife of Robert Crawley, the daughter-in-law of the late 6th Earl of Grantham and Violet Crawley, the sister-in-law of Rosamund and the late Marmaduke Painswick, the mother of Mary Crawley, Edith Crawley, and the late Sybil Branson, the mother-in-law of Tom Branson and the late Matthew Crawley. She is grandmother of Miss Sybil Branson and Master George Crawley. She is American and married into British nobility.

As a young woman, she was brought to…

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Don’t Talk About Me

“The song says something about not talking about me when I’m gone,” she whispered in his ear. “But I think that’s utter nonsense. Do talk, please,” she entreated.

He kissed her gently on the lips. “And you think the same of me,” he said as he looked up at the sky. Thunder and lightning were flashing wildly, giving rise to morose and solemn topics. It was as if nature was lighting a bonfire around which to tell scary stories.

“The roses in spring, the way the snow looks when it falls for the first time and my favorite songs,” she continued. “Talk, oh, just talk.”

Confessions of A Immature Wife

AlwaysCharmaine

Its 1:05 am. My husband is asleep beside me. The words I heard the night before are still pounding my head. My relationship with God is full of love and passion, but it is also one where there is a heavy presence of conviction.

 

On Wednesday night, I was up in prayer. Right now I am a housewife with no children, so I spend my days cleaning or reading, working on some projects that I should have already accomplished, so I can afford to stay up late most nights if I want too. I’ve always been a night owl, but this particular night the clock was striking 3 am.  So as I was praying “Lord, please show me how to be a better wife to Michael, I know I am a mature woman…” and that’s when He busted my lil bubble.

 

He said

 

“You are a mature…

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Home

She tried to open her eyes. The sleep had been one of cement, dragging her down into an abyss of oblivion, and it took a few seconds before fully awakening to focus on what was dream and what was real. Her eyelids were uncooperative, heavy and felt like they had been sealed closed with marble. But when she felt the slight pressure of someone squeezing her left hand, she opened them to see a pair of gentle brown eyes looking down at her.

“What? Where…”

“Hey, sweetie,” the woman’s voice crooned. “You’re home.”

Home? She swept the room with her eyes, but nothing looked familiar. As she propped herself up on one elbow, she remembered her dear friend’s voice and her eyes began to fill with tears. Could it be? Was it really happening now, after all this waiting?

“Do you mean?” The question floated away from her lips.

“Yes,” she answered, “you are home. There’s no going back for you. None, I promise.” She turned toward the door. “They’re coming, the others.”

One by one, they filed in, congratulating her and echoing the promise that she was not leaving.

The brown-eyed friend continued. “It was a long journey, but we made it.”

“No going back for you!” A second voice, belonging to a blonde girl at her right, said. “You’re one of us. You always were, but this is your home now. No worries, no worries…”

The tears of gratitude were quickly spilling down her face, and the two sisters at her sides wiped them away. “You’re home…”

Dance It Out Friday!

Making Money by Camera Obscura.

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Harassment Online: Not Just for Teens!

Together, Forever

The bomb had shattered everything in the air it had touched; what once had been a marketplace was now covered in glass shards and death. One always heard the idea that the bomb falling directly from above was the one that went unheard, so death had come unexpectedly in an island of momentarily silent peace. Yet he held me, despite the cuts running down his handsome face. “Look at me,” he urged with insistence in his voice.

I tried. All things were rising and falling, as if I were on a boat, swimming in a sea of blurred colors.

“Look at me, look at me,” he repeated as the frantic notes in his voice was controlled, but present. “Just keep looking at me,” he begged.

My head began to droop to one side. He lifted it with his free hand, the one that was not supporting my back. My body felt heavy and everything was moving, and I couldn’t make my lips form the words vital to express myself. I wanted to speak to him, to let him know what I hadn’t said. I needed him to know, I forgave him, wanted him forever, as long as it would last for us, anyway.

“Please,” he continued.

I forced my lips into a bloody smile as I gazed at him. Sighing deeply, I shook my head.

“I love you,” I said. “I will love you… beyond forever.” I squeezed his hand, wishing for the strength to bring it up to my lips. I would kiss each finger, every knuckle. But life was leaving me.

He laid me gently in the floor and I imagined I was sinking into the first green grass of spring, perhaps at a picnic. “I love you,” I sighed again, but I could not hear his reply. My mind became jumbled with chess sets and airplanes and why a cloudless night was the coldest of the year. I saw iceboxes open and fireworks exploding and flowers budding in the snow, saw myself dancing with him in the rain, winding the Victrola and changing the record. And I knew I was sinking, sinking into the blanket of his love as my chest rose slower with each uneven and nearly forgotten breath. I saw him now and I had to make it my forever. I had to carry him with me wherever I went from this point on. Although I could no longer clasp his hand, I still felt him holding mine. It was so difficult to stay awake, and the images were coming faster. I’d missed my chance to sing to him, make love to him on the beach. These were the things I thought I had a lifetime with which to surprise him, but I had been wrong.

The chances for my unresolved wishes would never come again. I closed my eyes tightly despite his pleas to try to stay awake, making the last effort of a wish that I could remain with him forever. Screaming from outside interrupted my reverie and I tried to turn my head away from the renewed waves of crashing and falling. We were at once thrown backward, but all I saw were his eyes. They continued to be my anchor to everything right as I felt the rest of my strength leave my body. However, the greatest surprise was to find myself still looking at them when I learned that there really was soft spring grass under my back, without wounds, blood or bombs. Here, there was no more pain, despair or dying; just he and I together, forever.

Blueberry Heaven

I was born into my new environment in an embryo of an ensemble, flesh colored with flowers that grew like morning glories breaking ground in June. There was a dinner party at an upscale restaurant in a city mall, and I covered myself with the tablecloth out of mistaken imagination that the flesh garment stopped only at the torso. Upon discovering that the length of the organza like fabric stopped a few inches above my ankles, I let go and mingled among the guests.

At one table sat my grandparents and various aunts and uncles, all absorbed in lively conversation. A waitress strode over to the table with a tray containing a blueberry pie and two crystal champagne flutes, filled with a sparky aquamarine liquid.

“Here’s the blueberry pie and the blueberry champagne,” she said as she put the pie in front of me. My great aunt looked confused as the waitress placed the two champagne flutes in front of her. The waitress laughed as she realized her mistake and swapped the dishes. “Here you go,” she smiled with a cheerful tone in her voice. “Enjoy!”

I took the glass and swallowed the swirly berry colored champagne in one or two swallows and proceeded to do the same with the next flute. It was becoming stranger by the moment in the restaurant, because nothing felt out of place. It should have seemed very odd. I kept waiting for other people I knew to arrive, yet they never did. However, the conversations among those seated at the tables was of ordinary things. Gardens and neighbors and next Saturday. A loneliness crept into my being, but vanished at the sight of a few faces I remembered from the other place. It was as if the previous ten years hadn’t occurred. They encased me in tight hugs and I could feel their bones under my fingertips. Their voices danced above the swirl of the room. I wanted to safely climb inside them, clinging to the edges of all the places where they had been and I had not. I felt the sting of how much I missed them. Yet, the people I sought were nowhere in sight.

The next thing I knew, I noticed someone tugging on my sleeve and I was led down the empty mall corridor. As the other one and I traversed the various stores, I saw their excitement and exclaimed that once I’d been here long enough, I could forget all about that other place, whatever it was. It was seeping from my memory more and more with every second that I spent here. It was fuzzier, out of focus. Everything I had been or done before was wiped clean, as though it had only been a dream or imagination. This was all so much more real and lasting.

I started to run with mirth through those echoless halls until I found myself not inside at all, but on a tree-lined street. A pumpkin-colored house stood across the street from me. It looked familiar and felt inviting. A tall blonde came up beside me. It took me a long time to recognize her as the childhood friend I wasn’t given a chance to have in my life, in that other place.

“You’re going to get to see my children grow up!” She exclaimed as she enveloped me in a hug. “That’s yours,” she said as she pointed to the pumpkin house. I was filled with a joy that I had never felt in that other place. Then, she disappeared from sight, along with the house and trees.

I then found myself in the yard of the house in which I’d lived in that other place. It was cold, dead and noiseless, until a small turquoise bubble car pulled up. I watched as an eighty-year-old woman got out and walked toward me. As she neared, an expression of sheer bliss came over her face. She ran faster and faster. The more she ran, the younger she appeared, until she was recognizable as my college friend who stopped at my home on the way back from spring break. As much unhappiness as living there had given me, she knew only happy memories. Suddenly, I knew what I must do to receive my pumpkin house.

I held the keys out to my friend. “It’s yours,” I said, and she gave me the biggest grin in all of heaven.

Then it, too, disappeared and I was back at the mall, sipping iced coffee with a new friend from the dinner party. We were within sight of the large glass entryway. I marveled at the beautiful colors that the sky was turning as night fell. It started a deep cerulean blue and morphed into inky, finally black. The pattern repeated endlessly, like a lava lamp. It was eternity and bliss, from which and I could only tear myself away because of one thought. The people I missed. I excused myself, pulled out my phone to find it fully powered, despite the time that had most certainly passed. But we were all energy and life, as long as I was touching it, my joy infused its battery, an exchange of this utopia and that other place. I dialed the numbers that were indelibly etched into my mind as I watched the changing sky.

Even though I could not make myself heard as I tried to speak to the living, I knew we wouldn’t be apart forever. This is forever, I knew, and nothing in that other place could come close to its blueberry wonder.