Reality Shift

Want a little woo? 

1 
I was driving to town and saw a new house just over a hill. Yet it wasn't there the last time I went by just a few days ago. I do remember the new house, it's just that I remember it being one road over. Same new house, different location. 

2 

Each day for years I walked through a nearby forest, the trail as familiar to me as my face. Along the path was a spot where I loved to pause, the place marked by two old stones. I loved the energy there and paused there often. One day, there were three stones there, not two. The place looked almost the same. The two old stones still sat where they always did, but within a few feet of them was another that had not been there before. I checked the new stone over carefully and saw that it wasn't new at all. Mossy, deeply embedded in the earth, it had clearly been there for ages. 

That meant that I must have been mistaken. Yet I wasn't mistaken. I'd walked that path hundreds of times and the third stone wasn't there until that day. I spent the next few hours trying to convince myself that I must have been mistaken and that there had always been the three stones. There could be countless reasons why I'd made a mistake. Yet, I knew I was right. 

3 

A friend's daughter had been dating a local boy who lived in a red brick farmhouse up the road. They stopped dating, but each time I passed I recognized it as Bill's farmhouse. One day, the house was wood, not brick, white, not red. I pointed it out to my husband, "Look. Bill's house was red brick. They must have sided and painted it white." As you can guess, my husband looked at me like I'd lost my mind and told me that the house had always been white. He's good with details, which made me wonder for a second if I had just remembered it wrong. But I'd passed that spot often over the years. I'd have known. Yet that day the house was white frame. 

It stayed white for years - until about a year ago when I drove by and saw it had changed back to red brick. It wasn't new brick, it had clearly been there for decades, weathered and stained in spots. 

The nature of reality is change. Episodes like this remind me that reality itself is fluid.

One Little Assumption

So I’m noticing a set of tracks in the snow on the trails. “Oh, they have the same springs on their boots as me.” Dog prints nearby. Then after a while, “Oh look their feet are about the same size as mine.” Then after another while, “Their feet walk in the same pattern as me.” 

You can see where this is going. 

It was the dog prints along with them that threw me off. I have no idea how long it took for me to realize they were my footprints from yesterday afternoon, and we’ve had no snow since. Someone’s dog must have followed my tracks. 

One little assumption, the dog, blinded me to the rest.