Do You Believe In Past Lives?
I was doing one of those stupid quizzes on Buzzfeed earlier today - you know the ones that tell you which tv show character you are, or as in the case this morning, which character from 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'. They are so dumb, but they just suck you in! I've done heaps and I don't see that I'll stop anytime soon, haha. I am Charlie Bucket, just as an FYI. I'm going to inherit the Chocolate Factory and die from constantly eating nothing but chocolate.
Anyway I digress.....it linked to another article on their site titled 24 Small New England Towns You Must Visit. I love New England, despite having never been there in my life. I actually did another Buzz Feed quiz a little while ago that proclaimed to tell me which town I should live in (in America), and I got Vermont! So I clicked on the link, and I was immediately transported to a host of beautiful places, the likes of which we just don't get Down Under.
So it got me thinking.....mostly about how a person can possibly be homesick for a place they've never even visited in their life. Because that's actually what it feels like! Weird I know. But honestly, I look at these pictures and the scenery takes my breath away and the architecture leaves me in awe.
I actually do believe in past lives. You can quit rolling your eyes now, you know who I'm talking to! But I honestly think that a lot of us have been here before. Maybe it's as simple as a collective memory from long ago which I've read about somewhere..... Or maybe it really is that some part of our consciousness, our soul for want of a better word, has actually inhabited some other physical body in a different point in time. Probably many more than one other physical body, but I think that in a lot of cases just one will stand out.
As a teenager I had an absolute fascination with the Salem Witch Trials, and really enjoyed reading about them and felt a lot of empathy with these women who were accused of witchcraft and subsequently burned at the stake. I felt some sort of connection to the idea and the place, but I think I dismissed it as just another example of me being a weird teenager. (I kind of was). I've always had a desire, for literally as long as I can recall, to live in a beautiful house, with a white picket fence in a gorgeous tree lined street....the house would be white, with a dark shingled roof and the trees would turn stunningly golden in autumn. In the winter there would be snow and in the summertime, the sun would shine and it would be warm.
I don't know where that desire ever came from. It's certainly nothing like what we have here in Australia and I've never lived anywhere else. But I can recall telling my Grandad about it when I was little; he reminded me about it not too many years ago and asked me when I was going to live in that white house? My favourite television series is set in a fictional town, Stars Hollow in Connecticut. Gilmore Girls made me want to live there. But (and here's where I sound even more nuts), it wasn't just that it was pretty and I wanted to live somewhere pretty.....it felt so familiar. It felt like I had lived somewhere like that before.
It made me feel homesick.
I get how ridiculous that sounds, I really do. But I can't help it. Maybe it really all began with my pre pubescent love affair with Anne of Green Gables......
I love the movie Practical Magic, with Sandra Bullock (who I really like), and Nicole Kidman (who I really don't like). I love the location and the premise, although I do know it was filmed in Washington state. The house was built (it was just a shell) to look like something straight from it's fictional location in New England and the small town where it was filmed had all the buildings on the main street painted white, again to emulate small towns in coastal New England. Apparently the weather was more amenable in Washington! Regardless, it evokes the same feeling in me. It's a feeling that I've been there before, that I've walked along streets like that and through houses that look like that.
Seriously though, look at this house and this street-scape. Who wouldn't want to live there?!
Almost all of Stephen Kings' novels are set in New England. I love Stephen King, but there is one in particular that evokes that same feeling in me. It's The Talisman, and he wrote it with Peter Straub. I think I've read that book a dozen times. And every time, when I read how Jack, the main character, stands looking out at the Atlantic ocean, I get that feeling. Call it de-ja-vu or whatever you like, but it's real. I swear to you I've stood there and felt that. I've seen that part of America and I've lived there and I loved it. That much I am completely sure of.
I hope one day I get the chance to see these places in person. I wonder what it will feel like? Will it feel like I've known it forever, or will I think (as I'm sure most of you do by now), that I should go and put on a straightjacket and commit myself to a lunatic asylum?
What about you? Have you ever felt like you've lived somewhere before, like you know some place so well only you've never even seen it in real life?
Anyway I digress.....it linked to another article on their site titled 24 Small New England Towns You Must Visit. I love New England, despite having never been there in my life. I actually did another Buzz Feed quiz a little while ago that proclaimed to tell me which town I should live in (in America), and I got Vermont! So I clicked on the link, and I was immediately transported to a host of beautiful places, the likes of which we just don't get Down Under.
So it got me thinking.....mostly about how a person can possibly be homesick for a place they've never even visited in their life. Because that's actually what it feels like! Weird I know. But honestly, I look at these pictures and the scenery takes my breath away and the architecture leaves me in awe.
I actually do believe in past lives. You can quit rolling your eyes now, you know who I'm talking to! But I honestly think that a lot of us have been here before. Maybe it's as simple as a collective memory from long ago which I've read about somewhere..... Or maybe it really is that some part of our consciousness, our soul for want of a better word, has actually inhabited some other physical body in a different point in time. Probably many more than one other physical body, but I think that in a lot of cases just one will stand out.
As a teenager I had an absolute fascination with the Salem Witch Trials, and really enjoyed reading about them and felt a lot of empathy with these women who were accused of witchcraft and subsequently burned at the stake. I felt some sort of connection to the idea and the place, but I think I dismissed it as just another example of me being a weird teenager. (I kind of was). I've always had a desire, for literally as long as I can recall, to live in a beautiful house, with a white picket fence in a gorgeous tree lined street....the house would be white, with a dark shingled roof and the trees would turn stunningly golden in autumn. In the winter there would be snow and in the summertime, the sun would shine and it would be warm.
I don't know where that desire ever came from. It's certainly nothing like what we have here in Australia and I've never lived anywhere else. But I can recall telling my Grandad about it when I was little; he reminded me about it not too many years ago and asked me when I was going to live in that white house? My favourite television series is set in a fictional town, Stars Hollow in Connecticut. Gilmore Girls made me want to live there. But (and here's where I sound even more nuts), it wasn't just that it was pretty and I wanted to live somewhere pretty.....it felt so familiar. It felt like I had lived somewhere like that before.
It made me feel homesick.
I get how ridiculous that sounds, I really do. But I can't help it. Maybe it really all began with my pre pubescent love affair with Anne of Green Gables......
I love the movie Practical Magic, with Sandra Bullock (who I really like), and Nicole Kidman (who I really don't like). I love the location and the premise, although I do know it was filmed in Washington state. The house was built (it was just a shell) to look like something straight from it's fictional location in New England and the small town where it was filmed had all the buildings on the main street painted white, again to emulate small towns in coastal New England. Apparently the weather was more amenable in Washington! Regardless, it evokes the same feeling in me. It's a feeling that I've been there before, that I've walked along streets like that and through houses that look like that.
Seriously though, look at this house and this street-scape. Who wouldn't want to live there?!
Almost all of Stephen Kings' novels are set in New England. I love Stephen King, but there is one in particular that evokes that same feeling in me. It's The Talisman, and he wrote it with Peter Straub. I think I've read that book a dozen times. And every time, when I read how Jack, the main character, stands looking out at the Atlantic ocean, I get that feeling. Call it de-ja-vu or whatever you like, but it's real. I swear to you I've stood there and felt that. I've seen that part of America and I've lived there and I loved it. That much I am completely sure of.
I hope one day I get the chance to see these places in person. I wonder what it will feel like? Will it feel like I've known it forever, or will I think (as I'm sure most of you do by now), that I should go and put on a straightjacket and commit myself to a lunatic asylum?
What about you? Have you ever felt like you've lived somewhere before, like you know some place so well only you've never even seen it in real life?
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