Stop Go Stop Go

Working on a new book has its disadvantages. It tends to take advantage of my guilt. Any moment I am standing still a thought comes into my head and if I do not add it to the accumulating pile of information that lives in the new book landfill then it is gone, gone forever.

This morning, I remembered one:

She was sure she had been an Indian in a past life. She didn't feel like explaining it, she told him. But when she was in the woods she just had that feeling.

She imagined telling that to her grandmother, who would just shake her beehive and ask if she wanted more rotisserie chicken. Those giant poultry shears looked like they could cut through a finger. She couldn't get that out of her mind. She shook her head.

What? he said. He thought she was paying attention to him paying attention.

No, she said. I was just remembering something.

From this life, or the one before? he said. Or the one before that? At some point maybe you were, like, a teletype machine. Click click click.

A what? she said. My grandmother had these poultry shears.