Visions

Dare to live your life to the fullest. Take a chance for you create your own happiness for it is a decision. Life is a daring adventure and creating yourself. Quote by Poet VISIONS I was haunted with these visions for decades and wondered why I kept seeing them, over and over. These visions were so vivid, detailed, lifelike, colorful. They started when I was probably thirteen or fourteen. I could not comprehend why I felt like this girl was me and why I was so certain it happened hundred years ago, somewhere in Europe that I used to think of reincarnation, if there is such, asking myself had I lived before, as this girl. I knew it was unreal for I could not be her; but I always thought with a smile, it could have been me in my past life. These visions came when I was awake, never in my dreams, and left me in a dreamlike state wishing I could live like her. I saw her with three girls giggling, laughing while walking in the street holding their books, all dressed in white blouses, like uniforms and appeared they were from affluent families. There was a building in the background, probably a school. Then the vision of her dancing on the stage in an auditorium or theatre, in white below the knee dress with her hair pulled up adorned with flowers while her three friends, dressed like her were on the side waiting, probably for their cue to join her. The last vision of her dressed in blue, painting in the back patio of her huge house with a beautiful manicured garden in the hill surrounded by green grass, trees and snowy mountains and winding roads going down a quaint village. She seemed to have an ethereal life, a contrast to my own. Since I wanted to be a dancer; but did not have the means. Her life was an imaginary life to me that there were times I was on trancelike state, when wishing I could be like her. My life got so complex that these visions became hazy, then shadowy for I tried to ignore and view them as fantasy. Five decades later, I retired and saw these visions almost every day and last year I thought to go to Europe to find out. The visions made me think this happened in Italy or Vienna in eighteenth century, so I planned to go to these places to make sense of these visions; however, Corona Virus hit and I could not travel and had to wait without knowing when I could go. I wrote a poem “Isolation, Uncertainty, Expectation” in April last year about me taken back to eighteenth century, dancing on a huge stage dressed in a white below the knee dress with hair pulled up with flowers and strands of curls draping my neck. Since I could not travel, I decided to google “ Italian dancer in the eighteenth century” and Marie Taglioni, a ballet dancer came up, as well as her picture in a white below the knee dress with hair pulled up with flowers and my jaw just dropped in awe. There was also another picture of her and the three girls in white dresses with their hair pulled up adorned with flowers. She was a Swedish born ballet dancer, partially Italian and moved to Vienna at a very young age and lived in Austria and France. Looking at her pictures, I had a picture that looked like her, which stunned and bewildered me and knowing about her was so surreal, as she was really European from an affluent family and my intuition of pin pointing Italy or Vienna was way beyond comprehension. After knowing about her in October of last year through google, the visions stopped; but I am going to Vienna for my own sanity. Why did I have visions of her? Why do we have similarities? How did I know it was Europe in eighteenth century? Need to know! 5/27/21 Writing Prompt - Dreamlike - Poetry Constance La France Chose: Highlight #2 Bold