I Make This Up

I look at the photograph of this woman--a photograph of anyone--and wonder what goes on in her head, in her life.  We all do, of course.  It is a stupid statement.  Who is she, though?  What is her home like?  Is she happy?  Last night, did she go out or stay home?  Children?  Etc.

I do it with people I meet, too.  So do you, I guess.  The man or woman at the bank who helps you start a new account.  The way he wears his tie, his shoes, the faint lines just beginning to form around her eyes.  They all tell stories.  It is that and the way a person doesn't respond to something you say.  Too personal?  Not friendly?  I do say surprising things in order to better size them up.

I imagine their personal lives, so far from the truth.  And yet, I think, we (I) shape our actions and our lives based on these imagined truths.  We do it even if we never watch a movie or read a story about a movie star.  We need these imaginative offerings of our imaginations.

The time change has goofed me up.  I have been overly-tired all week.  In the mornings, I wake too early and lie in bed trying to enjoy it.  I drift in and out, sometimes thinking, sometimes dreaming.  The dreaming part surprises me.  The dreams are always things I wouldn't think, yet there they are.  It makes me wonder about the show that goes on that I do not remember.  In these waking dreams, I have conversations with people, making them up, creating their responses.  It sounds like them.  It looks like them.  It is disorienting.  This morning looking at this woman's photograph, I wonder how much I (we) make up even the people I do know?  And how does that affect what we expect?  Do we dream even our lovers into unexpected roles?

And so I scare myself with this morning's missive, wondering now just what it is I don't invent, wondering about what I think is real.  Maybe the more imaginative ones of us are doomed to having more difficult times with the people we know than do others.

I blame it on the time change.  I'll be better next week, I am certain.  Otherwise, it is probably better not to think about it.