Omens and Portents

Herself speaks.

When I was young, sometimes I would have thoughts about future events that would turn out to come to pass. I hesitate to use the word premonition because of its negative connotations; foresight is a bit closer, though that word contains a component of prediction which is not quite appropriate. It was never anything weird or unusual -- no Professor Trelawney prophecies here -- more like some aspect of something that I would have no reason to know in advance, that would turn out to be that exact way. And I would be unsurprised at what would happen, because I had somehow known beforehand.

Harbinger, augury, foretoken, precursor?

Happenstance. Providence. Coincidence.

As I have gotten older, these occurrences have become fewer and fewer. Perhaps I don't spend enough time observing to be able to see them, or perhaps I do not recognize them for what they are. Have I lost the ability to hear the whispers of the Universe? (Did I ever have it in the first place?) Do I just mistrust what I hear? Am I afraid to listen? Perhaps it is the knowledge that so often, things do not go as we expect, that has changed how I see the future. I don't look for omens and portents, because I doubt them. And perhaps they are too clouded by worries and hopes to see, anyway.

And with all this being said: yesterday morning, there were two deer in a neighbor's front yard, and a rattlesnake in a parking lot, and I feel as though I should be looking for more right now. I have That Feeling. I cannot tell if it is expectation, or if it is merely a thing that is occupying my thoughts enough that I am misinterpreting the space it mentally occupies as the possibility of it occupying actual space in the future. Preoccupying. Prognosticating? Wondering.

Maybe it's nothing. Maybe I am getting a migraine and my brain is stuck on something (as happens from time to time). I won't mention what it is, because I will feel mighty silly if I'm misinterpreting a vague indigestion and and a few stray thoughts as something more meaningful. We'll just wait, and see.