Out of This World

Daydreams can blow the dust off reality, turning the mind toward hope and purpose.

Brisk dog walks kickstart memorable daydreams. This painting by Giacomo Balla lives at the Buffalo AKG—and also inside my head.

As my dog and I hit our stride in a raffish part of town, we approached a young man with a hip-hop swagger and a brash way with words: “Hey, I got a name for you! SOS, Stuck-Up Sweetie!” I’ve been called stuck-up a time or two, but never before by a devil-may-care speller in jeans slung so low, I could read the label on his undies.

Casey and I made a dashing pair that bright morning, my new cloche and gloves the same crimson as his leash. I must have looked a tad full of myself. Sunshine and a merry dog transport me to another realm where bedraggled storefronts disappear and I float, all aglow, on the current of my own thoughts.

I’ve been called out in meetings for escaping to my “happy place.” Growled at for smiling by a stranger grooved like the Rockies from a lifetime of frowning. Labeled a real bitch for looking right through a neighbor as if he didn’t even exist (this according to a mutual friend). It’s not that I considered this man beneath me, just that my imagination beat the pocked and mottled sidewalk we happened to share.

In yoga class I never learned to tame “monkey mind;” I’m too fond of my inner Curious George. Sometimes I dream of a killer paragraph, other times of what grainy mustard might do for Brussels sprouts. At crosswalks monkey mind can make treacherous mischief (just ask any driver who had to brake for me). Might as well admit it: My daydream habit has a downside. In a study of undergraduates completing a boring task, daydreamers were prone to “goal neglect.” Honestly, though. Isn’t that the whole point of a ramble with the monkey?

Most studies paint a more encouraging picture: daydreams as stress relief and portal to creativity. While pushing her toddler’s stroller in North Bennington, Vermont, Shirley Jackson was seized by a devilish idea: blood sacrifice in a town not unlike her own. “The Lottery,” written that day within hours, sparked an uproar in The New Yorker and became one of the 20th century’s most celebrated short stories. My own modest daydreams return me to myself invigorated and hopeful. They change nothing but my thinking. Which might be within a hair of everything.

Water, warmth and a merry dog are the stuff of enchanting daydreams.

When we spent winters in St. Pete, I used to walk Casey along Tampa Bay. Pastel apartment blocks give way to porticoed mansions, volleyball players to lone fishers casting their lines. A faux Venetian bridge separates the merely posh from the palatial. One fine morning I nearly ambled over to gawk, never mind the extra half-hour on my feet, but a daydream scooped me up. Where I landed, no one had any call for a six-car garage.

I was carrying an amphora through an ancient place. Heavy with water, it had been in my arms forever. I had learned to maneuver its weight while protecting my knees and back. Even so, I ached all over. My feet burned from mile upon pebbled mile in sandals. Many vigorous walkers overtook me with empty arms, but not one said, “Let me spell you for a bit.”

The villages on that road had cobbled squares with stone benches where a stranger could rest. With the amphora beside me and my face lifted to the sun, I attracted no end of curiosity, an old wanderer in a foreign-looking robe. Person after person remarked on the beauty of my amphora. “You’ve got room for a lot more water,” they would say. “How about I top you up?”

They flocked with their dippers till the amphora could hold no more. When the time came to move on, water sloshed at the rim. The road ahead wound upward—no distance at all compared to the road behind—but unless I started emptying the amphora, I’d stagger all the way. I had far too much water to drink myself—the coolest, clearest water you could find—and there wasn’t a garden in sight. I could slake the thirst of a village. Where was everybody?

A cyclist whirred past, wishing me good morning. Casey lunged at a squirrel. The flat path we’d just walked, with its fringe of dewy grass, had seconds ago been the dusty hill where a thin robe flapped around my ankles.

I was somewhere around 67, my mother’s age when she died. Time weighed on me. Years had passed since my first book, and I’d been casting about for another. A real writer would be proofing her next bestseller, not posting vignettes on Facebook. When friends described me as a writer, I’d reply, “I’m not a writer. I’m just someone who writes when she has something to say.”

If I had something meaningful to say, wouldn’t I be writing it?

The daydream arrived like a promise from an unseen mentor. I tucked it inside the mental pocket where I keep the poems closest to my heart. There it nestled with Gerard Manley Hopkins’ cliffs of fall, Robert Frost’s birches, Mary Oliver’s wild geese… century on century of images dating back to Beowulf’s dragon, guarding his hoard of stolen treasure. Images open mental windows. While taking out the trash or chopping garlic, I’d think of the amphora and see the water of life itself, close to 70 years of stories I had lived or heard or witnessed. I could populate a village with the people who brought me a dipper of experience. With more time behind me than ahead, I didn’t have forever to share the abundance.

The sure sign of a writer isn’t a book, whether you land a six-figure deal or go it alone and hope to break even. Nor is it planting your butt in the chair and meeting a daily word count till you hit the magic number. It’s being swept away by images and stories. I learned this from a daydream that happened to arrive on Tampa Bay. My mind was already engrossed in the work of every writer. I couldn’t exchange it for a politician’s mind, or turn off the image machine and take up quilting. My only choice came down to this: Would I live as my writer self or keep on trying to be something else? My “not a writer” line hadn’t fooled a soul.

The book that became Starter Dog took several years to come into view. What the amphora gave me was nowhere close to a road map. It drenched me in what I needed most: gratitude bordering on reverence for every moment of beauty or bafflement that pierced my day, lodged in my memory and called, “Write me.” I string these moments like beads on a necklace. Wind turning the pages of a cast-off book. A spangled butterfly alighting on a blade of grass at my feet. The parade of fellow humans who strut, argue, beseech or bend to pet a passing dog, the only living creature they’ve touched all week. Every one a splash of water that I caught just in time.

Let me pour you a drink.

Here comes Mr. Hip Hop, his grin wide as the sky, lighting up the block between a tattoo parlor and a dive bar. One minute earlier or later and I’d have missed a guy as happy to be him, in his bouncing wisecrackery, as I was to be me on the crest of a daydream. We belonged together, although a few seconds would do. I doubt he has the faintest memory of me. What’s another old dame with a cool hat and a dog? But I’ll be his Stuck-Up Sweetie forever.

Any daydreamers at my virtual kitchen table? Has your inner Curious George pulled you somewhere unforgettable? Tell us about it. I’ll be checking in to answer your comments and confessions.

If this post caught your fancy, take a look at “The Pleasures of Writing While Old.” Everything I’ve learned in more than 60 years of word craft I now teach in private coaching with writers at all levels. Intrigued? Message me to book your free, 20-minute chat to see if we’re a fit. Details here.

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