Winter Morning in Richmond, Indiana

Sometimes my dreams are like stories and I wake up more like a traveler stepping off of a long flight in an airplane than a woman rolling out of bed after a long night's "rest".



While I'm dreaming, Orion's belt is shining along with the moon that is waxing above my house in Richmond, Indiana. But I am a long way off in a landscape that could be only familiar to someone on another side of the world. There are different languages spoken and an unnameable river. I'm walking along.

Then I wake up again in this small town. Inside, the noises become mundane: the hum of the furnace down the stairs, the creaks my feet come to expect over the wooden floorboards. My neighbor's lights are on. The dogs are barking at the world outside their gates. Plows rattle on their mission to clear the slick roads. Snow accumulates on the branches. The kettle, my kettle wails its time for tea.

I look out: It is still night, but the light is reflecting off the freshly fallen snow conjuring colors mauve and violet in the sky and on the ground. The patio furniture, especially the table, looks like a sugary confection. Rusty fences, walks and gutters are transformed. Icicles hang densely like crystal cave formations. Everything looks like a sugary confection. Everything is transformed.

I wonder at the lights above each porch. The lives we lead in each little house with so much and so little in common. How many are still dreaming, and where are we in our sleep? Somewhere the next moment hangs in suspension with a mood of its own.

I'm awake. What will happen today?

Asleep or awake, near or far, life is adventure.

<3 the Local Gal