By The Pricking Of My Thumbs?

      Sheesh, it feels like there's something in the air, something pending, and I have no idea what the f*$k it is. For those who don't know me too well, for reasons quite beyond my capacity for explanation, my life, tends to have a specific rhythm to it, and it's certainly not I rhythm I particularly choose. But every now and again, something will happen-- something will be said, a memory will be evoked, a strange shiver will go down my spine-- and I will know (and I've never been wrong on this) that something is going to happen, or, usually, that something from my past is about to resurface, however welcome or unwelcome. And right now, I'm having that eerie sense set in again, and I'm wondering what the hell is coming down the pike. I seldom know what is coming down the pike, I just sense that something is. Tonight-- or, er, this morning, I guess-- the fourth straight 'shiver' happened in as many days.

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know... This probably sounds like gobbledygook, like quasi-mystical bullplop, and, frankly, I'm kinda hoping it all eventually is such nonsense. All I can do is assure you that I try not to think supersititously or portentously, but such 'shivers' (for lack of a better description) tend to be early-warning signs, or primers, for whatever's going to land. This morning's 'shiver': watching, for the first time in eight or so years, Braveheart-- a movie I don't particularly like, but, hey, there was nothing else on the tube. Anyway, I'm watching, or half-watching, and then I look at the screen just as the actress Catherine McCormack (who plays Mel's ill-fated wife in the film) turns to the camera and burns a perfectly glowing smile into the lens. It wasn't that I suddenly developed a crush on the actress or anything as insipid as that. It struck me that I knew that smile, exactly, or that her smile was almost exactly the same as a smile I've not seen in years. It was if I were no longer in the room when I saw it. I was back at a very particular moment in time, in a very particular place. It was, in a way, like looking again at an old love-letter, and almost but not quite forgetting all the time -- and other stuff, too-- that had elapsed since.

      Odd thing is, this isn't just a nostalgic thing, and I know it, mainly because there was something inexplicably 'forecasting' about the feeling I had watching it. This wasn't just remembering the past, it was more like, as much as I hate the word, an omen telling me, "Remember where you've been before? You're going there again." And even more oddly, I know what, and who, this does not have to do with; that's the thing with 'omens,' you can usually rule out certain things. I don't know if other people get these 'feelings' (what a waffling word that has become!), and even for myself, I don't even want to venture if, let alone what, any of this means anything. Eerie seems to be the word of the day lately, and I have a strange feeling there's a kind of personal reckoning (and I don't mean that in an apocalyptic sense) looming on the horizon. Yes, I know, it IS very, very strange. But I also know my instincts are never wrong in such matters. It's like (yeah, yeah, yeah) there are 'forces' gathering, and I know that they are; but I'll be damned if I know what those forces are, or whether they'll prove for good or for ill, or even for the awkward 'naught-plus' of a minor chord. Maybe I'm just an animal that vaguely senses a seismic shift in the offing. I don't pretend to know anymore.

      Why am I writing about this here? I don't know that either. What I do know is this: that smile, that particular smile, I've had various reasons to recall four times in the past four days, after a very, very, very long time of not thinking about it or recalling it, and, indeed, long after I was sure I had completely forgotten it. What I do find myself feeling, in my gut, isn't happiness or joy or fear or anger or anything else at all like that, but a feeling best summarized by those classic words from Bette Davis in All About Eve: "Buckle your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" Or, more pessimistically, Shakespeare: "By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked..."

      Or perhaps even Rick Moranis in Spaceballs: "So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." But I digress. As always. One question, though: this thing, does it have airbags? ;-)