what if you woke up and the hands you saw in front of you weren't your own?
I have a friend who's normal. I know, I know, is anyone really? A philosophical question I never meant to tackle. Well, at least, in my world of working with everything from autism to schizophrenia, she's just a little neurotic which hardly counts.
We like to walk for exercise and today when I met her at the corner, two of my dogs in tow and baggie of steaming poop in hand, I exclaimed, “What if tomorrow you woke up and you were in a different body?”
She looked blank. “I'm trying to get a different body. That's why we keep walking.”
“No. It's like this. Every morning since I can remember when I first wake up I hold up my hands and look at them. It helps me orient, I guess. Like, here I am, I returned.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Was there a doubt?”
“Maybe, for me there is. I just know, I wake up and hold up my hands, recognize them and know where I am. And suddenly this morning I thought, what if I looked at my hands and they weren't mine? I woke up in a different body, and the mystery is, how to do I get back? And do I even want to? Maybe it's like Freaky Friday or something, it gets started with a wish, ‘I'd like to be living a different life' and like an out of control pinball, off you go.” I'm very excited now. “Oh, and all the social issues I could explore, I mean, waking up Asian, or transgendered, or a street vendor in Bangladesh. I mean, would you even want to come back and be in your old body, and be in your old life?”
“I don't know.” She looks uncomfortable and laughs, the nervous kind that means SHUT UP YOU'RE WEIRD.
So I do, reluctantly. And I'm reminded, not everyone is plagued by this kind of imagination. Some artists, and other writers, and people with sleep disorders and possibly, bipolar.
I'm a writer. . . endlessly fascinated with stories. And possibly, a little bit weird though I try hard to hide that most of the time. How about you? Ever wake up consumed by a new idea?
Questions like that pop up in my head all the time, and usually I manage not to voice them, unless I’m with friends (or my husband), who’ll gladly play along. Occasionally I fail, which has caused a few awkward silences.
I often wonder: assuming search engines keep track of all the information we look for online, would you be able to distinguish the average writer’s search patterns from those of a murderer, terrorist or psychopath?
(I suppose we’re visiting more grammar-related sites.)
Thanks KC! I thought about that already and did a post on it, I think on my old blog that got deleted. Something like, What does your search history say about you? Yeah. Interesting!
It may be we’re just brave enough to express these ‘weird’ thoughts.
That’s it! That’s the explanation (justification) I was looking for!
I love the way you think, the way you express what you think, and reading your blog is such a great lift for my spirits Toby. Your honesty, and willingness to wonder what life would be like in a different wrapping, shows your great empathy and curiousity about the variance in human experience!
Or should that be “variety in human experiences? I didn’t check a grammar site first… 😉
Sometimes I wake up and think, “Oh, I’m still here.” I somehow think there’s a fairytale land I get to return to as soon as my episode ends.
Janie
Oh thank goodness! What a relief to know I am not alone LOL. My family and friends tell me I’m weird all the time – especially my children “your super-weird Mom.” Yah thanks, now I can tell them it is my ‘creative side’ trying to bust out.
😀
When I was young, I would often wake up with a sense of falling, like I was away wandering off somewhere and returned to myself only when my mother shook me awake! 🙂
You know, we writers think of ‘weird’ things all the time…I once made a comment on FB on similar lines and got laughed at by a host of people. I’ve now learned to keep my imagination to myself, or my notebook. Never further, unless I’m putting out fiction.
I would love to find myself in a different body, a place or time, but I’m reasonably sure I’d want to come back!
me too!
I don’t usually wake up with new ideas from dreams, although I do work on ideas I already have, in dreams.
My imagination likes to explore puzzles and incomplete information. Fill in the story. My answers are usually wrong, but they’re more interesting than the truth. From these, grow stories.
More interesting than the truth, indeed. Except, when truth is stranger than fiction, and I’ve had some of those too!