Murder Recall

Parallel Consciousness

The good and the bad twins are still part of me, even though it's years now since I wrote The Locket. I started with the story of Shea and her journey, Another Life, and found myself imagining another layer to the story. It took me forever to decide on the twins' names and at last I just knew they were Davine and Sindy, but how the idea for those names came to me, I have no clue. Shea's journey gives meaning and direction to Shea's life. Writing her story and about Davine and Sindy, gave me mine. I never stopped missing my own babies and I think that's probably why they also became part of the book. The good and the bad came from my dreams of Winnie's good and bad dollies. My curiosity about Winnie grew. I felt she was more significant in my life than I knew and I wanted to learn more about her. There is at least one other layer of existence in my own life, likely because I spend so much time sleeping - dreams. I'm living a life there, journeying through a fascinating, beautiful world, meeting people and having adventures. When I wake up, I have forgotten nearly all of it, however, the knowing that I am someone in that other world stays with me. Likewise when I am living my dream life, I never remember who I am while awake. Yet, these two worlds, my identities here and there, are as intrinsically linked as are the two strands of genes in our DNA spiraling around each other.

The inspiration for the abandoned house where Davine wrote the story of Shea is based on the house that Maya told me about and that she took me to see, located in the now mostly unguarded boundary lands. This was the house where I lived the first years of my life but I can't recall anything distinct about those times because I hadn't the language at the time to organize my experience into a code that I could recall. The day after Maya showed me the place, I went back there on my own. Maya had leads to follow up on and couldn't come with me. I was very careful and encountered no one. Something mysterious was drawing me there. A rotting, broken-down fence marked the edge of what was once the property. There were many tall maple trees, red with fall colour. Long grass that reached my shoulders covered the ground. Wild roses, taller than me, grew everywhere. White pines hid the remains of the residence. A dusting of fresh, early snow lay undisturbed. I followed a narrow path through the grass to the house. The sun shone through the openings where there was once glass. I went up a spiral staircase to the top floor and sat on a chair looking out the window. This had once been the office Maya had told me. Floral oil paintings, still very bright with colour, hung on the walls, painted by Winnie.

I don't have much energy these days, compared to what I used to. I'm just accepting it, rather than fighting it. I don't long for the past. Same with my vision. Nothing is as sharply defined as it used to be and reading is next to impossible without my glasses, but I am accepting it as my vision and appreciating it for what it is. Interesting and most appreciated, is that while my once sharp focused view of the world has become blurry, my perception of colour has enhanced and the richness of light, shadow and the depth of colours intrigues me. This new vision is as amazing as what I had before; it's just different. I sat there, fixated on what I was seeing and transcending inwards, imagining things spontaneously. The window became a mirror. I was looking at what I reasoned was me, but it didn't look like me. It was a much older woman. If I tilted my head, so did she. If I raised my hands, so did she. She, I knew, was me. Then in the reflection of the door behind me, I saw a woman who I immediately recognized was me. She went down the short hallway and I saw myself following her. I went outside and sat in the sun on a bench under a ledge. There was an old patchwork blanket and I pulled it around my shoulders. As I did that, a cloth dolly, exactly like my own that I had since I was little, slipped out from the blanket. This dolly though, had been torn in two and that distressed me. I held her together to see how she could be repaired. I went back inside the house, carrying the torn doll, looking for a sewing kit. I found one in the kitchen and stitched her back together.