My Vivid Imagination

As a child I was given to flights of fancy. Mother's term was vivid imagination. I used to have very lucid dreams which had this scary tendency to come true. Like the time my father's mother and his step-father died in the Ruskin Heights Tornado. But for those inclined to stop reading at this point let me mention the lens flares in the photograph on this blog are not ghosts.

I have always liked to bend the rules (Mom's term was willful) just to see what I will get. I know you should never shoot into the sun. on this occasion I just liked the composition, the placement of the trees, the sense of light and shadow. I took the photo so I could go back to the studio and use it as a basis for a painting. Artistic license.

And sometimes by going where you should not go, or doing what you should not do you find something out about yourself or your medium. And sometimes your vivid imagination connects things in your mind which for others would remain separate. Sometimes that just leads to worry and fret over things which never happen. The question is how to know the difference. I call them collective days. StarWars termed them "disturbances in the Force."

Yesterday began simply enough: hang lights on the exterior of my newly sided studio now one step closer to completion. No problem. Except yesterday I worried all day about an accident. I'm an electrician. I work with electricity and ladders all the time and usually without thinking about it. But yesterday there was a constant fear of falling off the ladder, having the ladder collapse or fall under me, dropping a light fixture, dropping the ladder through one of my studio windows; all of which led to me being hyper careful. A couple times I even considered not doing my designated task for the day. After all the phone lines were down.

Due to some glitch at Qwest nobody in several rural towns nearby could call out of their own little town. And as we all share an emergency dispatcher that meant no 911 capability.And cell phones were stretched to the limit. Calls could not be completed because everyone was using them in hopes of communication. So carrying the cell phone in case of emergency was not making any sense.

I told myself my fears were groundless but kept repeating my mantra: It is not necessary to have an accident to give yourself an excuse to blow off your to-do list for the day. But I trudged on determined. But some six hours later when Qwest finally solved their "facilities issue" the first call I got was from my ex-husband (friend and co-worker) to say he was in the hospital. He has been rather more sick than he should be of late. I have worried about his immune system. Perhaps the hospital blood tests will get to the bottom of his series of "flus and colds."

So I should be totally at ease. Worry on the ladder might have just been linked to vibes from Marc. But rather than settle me down the news puts me more on edge. It is with some relief that bedtime arrives and I take two Advil PM and head to sleep perchance to dream. Not the night I wanted the dogs to start barking at midnight. Not their must-be-some-strange-kitty-in-our-yard bark, or even the what-was-that-noise bark, but the I'm-not-going-out-there-bark. But if whatever creature is far too close makes it to the bedroom I am willing to give me life.

The do sporadic barks for about an hour. I note the time. And I take inventory of the fact that while I installed the lights I did not energize them. The 300 watts of flood lights would be very nice at this moment. I was going to get the breakers from Marc. But he is in the hospital. It all seems so very collective in my mind; of a set, a disturbance in the force. Or hopefully just my vivid imagination.