Timecatcher
Twisted In The Shape Of Eternity
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Now. The sun was setting here and rising somewhere else. Amazingly, that’s how it works.
Angela was up on a stepstool, screwing a small hook into the ceiling in one corner of her bedroom.
Thomas had sent her this beautiful dreamcatcher.
Bent willow branches—as if in the shape of the eternity symbol—with a spider-web made of cord and beads, and one large feather.
She stood admiring it lightly swinging and then noticed the sun setting outside her window. The firey red ball had just sunk behind the buildings, leaving behind a delicious pink opal glow.
That time of day when the city shifts to its night phase—light switches being thrown everywhere.
Then. Thomas had left New York almost two weeks ago.
First stop was visiting a dear friend in Duluth. Both being great fans, the two managed to take a day trip to Hibbing to see Bob Dylan’s childhood home. While traveling around they went by the Leech Lake Reservation — the source of the dreamcatcher.
Thomas did want to stay longer, but he had to make his intended destination by the last week in August.
He mailed the package with a short note:
May this Ojibwe charm protect you and hold your best dreams in its web until I get back. Hang it near our bed. Wish you were here. See you in September.
Oh, and I also found the perfect little wooden box to put the ashes in.
I’ll probably be in Nevada when you get this.
He picked up his sister’s ashes from her husband in Odessa, Texas. They were to be distributed in a few of her favorite places, including some which would head back to Central Park with him.
The impetus of this entire journey — this one special batch of her ashes in this beautiful wooden box—would go to the middle of the desert in Nevada.
Thomas made one last call from a hotel room in Reno.
The next morning he was heading for a week at his ultimate destination—a dry lake bed a hundred miles away—towards an art and community celebration which culminated in the burning of a temple where the…