As I cope with that elegant Southern disease known as “the crud” – basically a vicious head cold with symptoms that verge towards but don’t quite reach bronchitis and a life span of about 14 days whether you like it or not – I have been doing a lot of sleeping. Pretty much whenever I can. When I’m not at work, I’m taking at least two naps a day, which is highly unusual for me.
So today, after persistent noises from the 21-year-old reminded my husband and I that grocery shopping had risen up the list of chores from recommended to necessary, a trip to Publix left me heading to the house ready to crash yet again. Apparently, walking up and down the aisles at Publix trying to remember what we needed was too much for me.
This time though, my mind refused to fold into sleep. My eyes closed, my body relaxed into the covers in the cool room, but my consciousness refused to dive into a sleep state. Instead, I drifted gently over the landscape of my mind. Odd thoughts and places floated up and back down – I visited some scenes from The Hunger Games, times when Katniss has a snatch of peace and quiet, and Carol Perry’s Salem, Massachusetts (I’m on book 12 of her Witch City Mystery series), drifted by the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Key West and Disney World, floated over a few scenes from some other books I’ve read recently and then ended up back in my bed with a feeling that it was time to get back up and do something.
I’m hoping my subconscious corralled all those images so I can blend them together into something coherent in my active imagination and bring a story out of it. At a minimum, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to write about a hot air balloon soon.
Always interesting what our minds conjure up in that relaxed, half-conscious state snuggled under a warm covering in a cool room. Add a possible fever to it, and who knows what heights our imagination will take us to. Certainly something to be mined for potential writing projects.
ReplyDeleteFeel better, Nancy!
ReplyDeleteI hope you feel better soon and retain your lovely fantasies and half-awake, half-asleep dreams. And a balloon, definitely a balloon. Instead of women wearing sunglasses on book covers, we'll soon see balloons.
ReplyDeleteI had a dream the other night about a play I'd read in high school and hadn't consciously thought of since then (that's more than 40 years ago). I think often about all the minutiae our brains store, and why they choose to bring out certain tidbits when we least expect them!
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