Before

What Dreams May Come...

Written by Matheson and the title inspired by Hamlet's soliloquy, "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause."

Chris Nielsen: A whole human life is just a heartbeat here in Heaven. Then we'll all be together forever.

Chris Nielsen: Is that a kind of occupational hazard of soul mates ? One's not much without the other ?

Albert: Soul mates. It's extremely rare but it exists. Sort of like twin souls tuning into each other. Apparently even in death.
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Matheson wrote about coming back here and dying and leaving people behind and love. His dream was a painting and a song and the idea that once you love you never stop loving and once you are you are always in the hearts of those you touch and those who love you. I've read the book a dozen times and watched the movie more. Grief is but part of triumph and sometimes when you win, you still lose. That is the nature of life and of love and we will be back, we will always be back, everything recycled and nothing forgotten, really.





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There are moments when you turn the corner
of a strange city and you know the next building
like you know the next brush stroke even though
you've not had a painting instruction
The colors are an instinct, the way you hold the brush
worship the canvas, must be the way you held a lover
in another life
and don't we want to come back?
Don't we need another go around to be sure we've lived
every aspect of life?
and in the next chance we will get to go back and find
the one we couldn't love
to learn to speak French, to play the piano,
teach poetry

I want to come back as a butterfly and flutter from
Mexico up to Arizona and settle in a desert flower
and admire Sedona from staggering heights
or to be a prodigy and paint from the time I am old
enough to hold a paint brush, to paint everything all my life
to not worry of family or books or love
just the smell of the paint on my fingers and the making of art

We would all be different people
no simple task to find someone you loved before
unless of course they knew just the question to ask
I'd know my Best Friend's giggle in the song of a child
the smell of my mother's hair, my son's green eyes
in a field of knee high corn
and know them all over again, to love them as a butterfly
to know them as a song to sing that song on a robin's beak
to comfort them as they know you are close
isn't that the promise of heaven?

In this life I was a wife and sometimes I'm still a mother
I have loved and been loved and I always know
I have more than I deserve what I put into the world
flows back to me like a mighty river
so in the next if I suffer I will suffer gladly
and think of afternoons at my favorite Greek place
with my Best Friend laughing of nothing ordinary
In my next maybe dreary life I will think of
the gloaming of winter evenings and know I've had heaven
held it in my heart, ate chocolate, laughing
in my favorite gray tshirt
and wonder why I stare at the clock around five
waiting


As a woman I can reinvent myself from "Oh she makes bread."
to "she is an artist", "she loves the little animals."
there is freedom in being someone new,
something of your mind's construct
one moment a pondering idea and the next it's real
Juliet wasn't a tragic notion until the Bard
wrote her, dancing in his head she would die
when he sobered up or woke up
not really sure what he dreaming just knowing
for a day or two he held the sadness

I don't have the confidence I was something of grandeur before
I wasn't a queen but I designed her gown
I didn't fly Amelia's route but I do love to fly
and french fries make me happy so maybe I was a gull
I painted and planted and I knew loss
Certain I was a sad girl I embrace sadness now
like a long lost friend
I didn't sing for an audience but
I made a king laugh with a silly poem
and somewhere someone fought for me because I expect it now
anything less is so undistinguished, I can't be bothered
wasting this precious time on blase

Perhaps I lived in Paris and served drinks to
Wilde as he dined with Picaso and laughed while
he charmed a dancer in treacherous heels
or lived on a houseboat and a gar fish bit my arm
No, that wasn't another life, that happened when I was nine
time tends to coincide and we are caught in it's rules
and then when we hear the metronome
a song is playing a song from another era and we are taken there
just knowing and when you know something
I don't care how many lifetimes you've lived it's almost
impossible to not know it's tune
I'm happiest when I sing along

I know I danced, dancing feels right
and I like to imagine I've dined with Eliot
and we lost an afternoon
and in Italy in some small town Ernest
stopped by, a little cafe to drink something cool
and I made him that drink
and when I read The Old Man and the Sea
I always imagine him eating Oysters
with a very coy smile like that of a 12 year old boy
finding mischief
and isn't every grown man really a 12 year old boy afterall?
I think that's why I delight in them so

If everything alive were of the same magic dust
the same power to please or destroy
if that were a truth then soon my garden
would be full of souls that were either lost
or found who wanted to bask in the afternoon sun there
who wanted me to wander out and whisper them poetry
and the bee buzzed my head would whisper something sweet, sad Emily
would have said so I could find my way here to share it with you?
Oh John sing to me and help me imagine
I call on my mother's gentleness and my father's strength
to show me how to do it over and over again
fearless and alive

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I was inspired of course by the Indigo Girls singing Galileo on the previous post. I lunched and then called Best Friend or she called me, and we discussed being here before. She was ever so certain I was a poet before or maybe someone who sang songs. I was sure she was a warrior, fashioned after a Greek Goddess as she always considers herself the Goddess in bunny slippers and she is.

I know I've been a cynic a few times around and I've never sailed with Columbus as the big ships make me queasy. Trains make me grounchy so I wasn't a conductor. I hate to drive anywhere so I wasn't a race car driver and I certainly wasn't a warden of anything, I hate to discipline adults. Best Friend, oh she was perched on some throne somewhere and when an order wasn't given, it was expected to be known. Gods I love that about her. She did drive and drive and drive and one day in this lifetime we will take a trip all the way across the country with nothing but maps and cold cold iced tea.

My son? In a former life he had many children, but not a mormon, he loves entirely one at a time. My exhusband, he was a jackass, he likes being one over and over again. The bossy Repubican? He was a king, he likes to rule, micromanage and he would have enjoyed the meetings, endless meetings. He would have made them create a podium in his honor all covered in gold leaf and at one time in another life a band of female warriors, beat him silly. He didn't intend to incite them but he forgot the woman he did anger had a band of them as friends. At this point Best Friend chimes in, "Carrie, in another lifetime he was a Nazi." My brother? He was a painter, a recluse in another life. When I hear him talk baby talk to the dog I think he must have been a farmer before the allergies, before the high rise life and he talked to the pigs when he took care of them and he never slaughtered one living a ilfe without bacon just for their company.

My mother was a man in another life who ran a company without a hitch and my father was never a woman and of course never really a businessman. He was a builder and a planner and he taught men how to make wine with their feet. He destroyed, she built.

And of course in another life, we found each other. I've known you before. You were waiting for someone and I was wondering why you were waiting. You told me you weren't waiting and I never saw you again but I carried those few stolen moments around. Perhaps it was the flicker of a blue eye, maybe it was that you extended your hand so easily and it was so warm, my mind wouldn't let it go. You dreamed about me and me of you, of course. Your shame and my pride never waivering. So we will get to do this all over again, maybe for lifetimes. I can't think of any other way.

Carrie.