imagine you are somewhere nice

like a beach.. the words of my dentist as he leans toward me with a syringe in his hand. i close my eyes quickly to block out the rest of the needle & i immediately start trying to conjure a beach! to my great dismay & consternation (i discover quite quickly) i have no imagination!

this concerns me. as a creative person - i've always believed i have a healthy imagination (these two things seem to go hand in hand). though i do remember my dad once told me that i had an incredible imagination as a child (drawing fantastic inventions & the like) but the school system squashed that imagination out of me in grade one!

i spent the whole time in the dentist's chair thinking about why i could not conjure up a beach (in the end, that fixation and obsession that may have been just as effective as the thought of bright sand and margaritas...) when he asked me @ the end of our session - "do you have any concerns?" my only response was "i'm worried that my imagination could not get me out of this chair" - he says "ìt hardly ever does". this experience has left me feeling deficient (& a little numb - at least on the left side of my face)...

Imagination is more important than knowledge... Albert Einstein