I was flying with Annie last night.
After a long week–after a long day–I finally was able to crawl off to bed and get some sleep. Seriously, I think I was barely able to get comfortable before I was sound asleep. Because, up to that point, I was running on empty.
Didn’t keep me from working, however. While it was slow coming out, and my head really wasn’t in it, I churned out another 625 words for the current part of Diners at the Memory’s End. I liked what I was writing, actually, because it was sort of a affirmation from my other major character, Albert, about why he was feeling like a total shit. Yes, he got conjugal with his study partner, Meredith, and while it might have felt good at the time, right now he’s feeling a lot of stress over what happened. He’s never been in this sort of situation before, having a steady relationship and ending up sleeping with someone else, and it’s twisting his mind around, and not in good ways.
It doesn’t help that when your girlfriend, lover, and companion actually arrives by floating up the sided of forty meter high tower, and hovering off the side just so she can scare the shit out of you–yeah, you’re a little out of your class already.
If not for the fact that I was falling asleep while I was writing, I might have actually hit a thousand words last night. That used to be the norm, but these days it seems the exception to the rule. I’m going to fix that, trust me. I probably need to stop chatting it up at the Mean Girls Table, trading our lunchroom advice to each other as we scope out all the other writers were ready to hate. Like, you split an infinitive; you are like soooooo lame.
So then it was off to bed, and to my dreams.
I haven’t remembered much of my dreams these days, but last night I was back in vivid dreaming land. Something about creatures growing, and people telling me where I could go and what I could do–yeah, I get that. I’ve been going through that a lot of late.
That part I only partially remember. Because there was a point where Annie showed up, and she flew me away.
I haven’t dreamt of Annie in a long time. Which is a shame, because I used to love seeing her in my dreams. She’s always been someone special to me. After all the frustration I had trying to bring her story to fruition–and to bring it out correctly–she vanished from my mind.
But I was thinking of Kerry the other night, and here, suddenly, Annie shows up, broom in hand, and handed me mine, and tells me, “Let go while the light is good.” And my younger self–because I am young, maybe thirteen–I straddle my broom and follow her off into the sky.
There was a part where some hicks were pointing at and making fun of us, but that was a minor part. The rest of the time it was Annie and I, in our flying clothes, zipping through the sky at 80 mph. We were chatting, but I couldn’t tell you what we were saying, because there was nothing but blue and sun and light clouds around us. Every so often she’d turn to me, and smile, and something I felt a long time ago returned, something I haven’t felt in a while, and something that I’ve needed for a while.
If only for a little while, it was good the share the sky with someone close.
For when you do, you know they are never far away.
