Childhood Dreams

Do you remember what you wanted to be as a kid? I do.

For me, rock shops were heaven. I remember being a little girl, repeatedly walking down a desert road holding my grandfather's hand to visit a little local shop that was tiny, dirty, dark. It smelled like fresh dirt and rays of sunlight caught the shimmery dust kicked up by our feet carefully avoiding the piles scattered in some semblance of order on the floor. Every space was filled to the ceiling with boxes, not the pretty shelving of refined staging but cardboard boxes in varying states of newness. My Grandmother had a ring made for her there with a beautiful piece of Citrine with a solid clean gold setting. I still remember how it looked in the single bulb spotlight when we went to pick it up.

I wanted that shop. I wanted to create jewelry surrounded by the raw earthy tactile rocks and crystals all around me, to make beauty from something once buried within earth's bosom.

And I remember my grandmother's book shelves. Rows and rows of books not just standing up neatly but shoved in on top and in front of each other. Every little piece of available space filled with well read books, spines permanently creased and pages dogeared and yellowing from exposure to the elements, a faint smell of smoke that to this day I can still detect on a few of the books I inherited. Piles of books that appeared more like a jenga set that was one piece away from toppling sat in front of the floor to ceiling shelves so access to the books on the wall became a feat in dexterity and creativeness. There were murder mysteries and books written by Tibetan monks, books about crystals and healing and mediums and a full set of encyclopedias. There were books on whatever my Grandma was curious about. It was my library. And from there I would take a book back to my typewriter and I would type very seriously as I read, as if I were the author and editor and publisher and the pages held little pieces of my soul.

I wanted not just to read those books, because I think I read most of them over the years, but to be the one responsible for bringing them into the world, to have the words cascade through me and around me and live life wrapped in the expression found on those pages, to change someone else's life the way those alternate worlds changed mine, providing me with solace & inspiration.

Take yourself back... do you remember what it really felt like when you would imagine what you wanted to be?