just rambling here

I keep thinking I need to call my mom and let her know I'm home.  The feeling to call my mom has been strong ever since she died.  My sister feels it, too.  We communicated with her, daily, for the most part over the phone.
It's a feeling as if something will stay incomplete unless you "let her know".
Of course, she does.
I imagine her observing evenly, having become the Owl she always was.  Observing the movements of my heart and mind, but having no judgement, no need to assign value, either good or bad... just observation, and an accompanying peace.
"I see her,"  Owl says.
And that, in part, gives me some peace.
My birthday in three days.  I will be sixty-two.  In light of recent events, this number is somewhat less ordinary, or even meaningless.  Now it is the number of a significant life event that threatens to take away one's accumulation of numbers.   If you get my drift.
The woman in the bed next to me looked to me like she was maybe 80.  I soon learned that she was 67.  She was ravaged by cancer, and it was robbing her of her numbers. 
I don't know how many numbers I'll have to give in, if any, and I don't care to know.  Makes no never mind to me.
When the time comes, Wolf will howl beneath a pearly moon, while Owl hoots nearby.  True essence emerging.  Numbers will be obsolete.
Today I thought about extraordinary encounters I've had throughout my life, with higher consciousness...  although "higher" isn't quite the right word for me.  It is not so much higher or lower as it is Open or Shut.   The more you open, the more levels that can be experienced.  I think this is why I experienced many things in my teens, 20's, and 30's...  we are less jaded by the world, so more open.  Life and its trials and tribulations through the years can often close down a lot of expanded consciousness.... at least that has been my experience.
Though in no chronological order, some of the things I've gained familiarity with, first hand, are:
astral travel
shamanic journeying, power/spirit animal retrieval
encounters of the 3rd kind
pressence of spirit beings under varying circumstances
At this point in my life now, I am suddenly feeling closer to that openess which allows such energies to make themselves known.
Time will tell, and I will, too, if stuff starts revealing itself.
You never know what, either.
Way back when, in Medicine Wheel Gathering days, when Sun Bear was still alive, I remember talking to Grey Antelope about Spirit animals and such.  I was thinking maybe he could tell me what mine was, and I believe I hinted that it just had to be a bird of some sort.  Well Grey Antelope never did tell me my power animal.  Wolf came to me clearly in lucid dreams, over a course of time, until I was "given" the name, Running Wolf.  Not nearly a bird after all!
Just rambling here.

dances with wolves

In the creation of characters, I sometimes first think of a name, or a purpose.

Like "Agri"... this is a name that came to me once, and it turned out to mean "fire", I believe. I'll have to check that. I had been doing a meditation on my guardian angel, and that's the name that came to me. Her purpose (odd that I should give this angel a feminine persona, when Fire is so male) is to keep watch over me, of course.

Her hair is a molton gold, her eyes are firey blue. She is shaped like a flame, a wisp. She is ephemeral. Perhaps too ephemeral to bring to life.

Sometimes parts of a story nag at you. Could be the story behind a character doll, and then there's a particular type of foot that wants to be made now, with big fat toes, belonging to a pleasant troll who has many friends. I have only made one troll, but in my mind there is a whole lineage following that one, and many others, who have gone beyond the bridges, and are living in forest lands. Few of them steal your gold, though they have been known to do that. Sometimes they just take what you don't need. Anyway... I've seen their feet, and their nose and hands. I've seen what's in their pockets and bags. The wait for my hands to bring them to life... to open their eyes.

It is sort of like shamanism... where one finds their power animal and brings it into one's heart... then gives it life by "dancing the animal".