The photograph was of a girl about twelve years old. Her face had lost its baby softness around the jaw, and she had an air of being about to change, of being not quite finished.

Her hair was dark, with the curls cut short and close around her face and the top of her head, but left in wavy long sausages past her shoulders on the back and sides.

She wore a brown, high-necked, yoked blouse with long sleeves puffed at the shoulder. There was no jewelry, no cosmetic assistance apparent.

Her expression was pained, as if she were unhappy with her appearance and not eager to be recorded by the camera at all. Her mouth was set and tight, as though she felt anger or anxiety. She looked as though she might roll her eyes in exasperation at any second. I could imagine her mother telling her to sit still, to be cooperative, to behave as she posed interminably for the photographer.

The photograph was fairly large, framed with glass, and marked $45.

I had less than $20 in my wallet, and maybe $300 in the bank until the next payday, more than two weeks away. I decided that it would be silly to spend the money on a photograph of someone unrelated to the family, but I felt sad as I turned away that her own family wouldn’t take care of her portrait.

When I told my husband about it when I got home, he asked why I hadn’t bought the picture, and I was reassured that I’d married well if he understood the desire to give that young girl a home again. He said we could make up a name and a story for her, tell it to visitors as if she were our aunt or cousin. I loved that he saw the potential in the photo of a stranger.

I was lost in Wrightsville Beach, trying to find a restaurant I'd seen reviewed in an independent newspaper I'd picked up at the hotel. While I looked for a road between beach houses where I could turn around, I set the radio to scan local stations. I stopped it and sent it back to a call-on show. A woman was saying, "I know I'm not in the right job. But how do I figure out what resonates with me?"

The host of the show asked, "What do you think you want to do?"

The woman answered, "I think I want to write."

"Write what?"

The caller admitted she didn't know. "Something that helps people," was all she could offer.

I was completely absorbed now. This woman was echoing what had been circling in my own brain for years now. But this is where I knew what I would advise the caller.

And this is where the host lost me.

Barely disguising her disdain, the host said, "So, what, you want to be the next Deepak Chopra?" as if that were a ridiculous notion.

"And if she does, that's a great and noble goal!" I yelled at the radio.

The host made suggestions for some soul-searching exercises that weren't off the mark, but her tone was judgmental and condescending now. She told the caller to keep her job but to try to narrow her goals and to call back when she'd done that.

I turned the radio off and, wishing I had the caller's number, I talked to her there in the car for another ten minutes while I looked for another restaurant.

"Do you keep a journal? Do you write just for yourself? Could you write a message for a target audience you'd like to help--kids or young women who are like you were? People who feel discouraged? Others who could learn from your mistakes? Could you start by writing a memoir? Could you write about a turning point in your own life? Could you start looking for life lessons in your daily experiences that you could write about?"

I knew I would have sent this woman away encouraged, fired up to write, even if only for herself. There was nothing wrong or vague about her expressed desire. Why did it provoke such a negative reaction in the host when the apparent purpose of the show was to advise callers?

There's a special circle of hell for those who shoot holes in others' hopes. And if anyone needed a new job, it was that host.

I loved the scene in the remake of "Father of the Bride" when Diane Keaton told Steve Martin something like, "Every time you roll your eyes, every time you complain about the expense, you subtract joy from your daughter's wedding day." I've wanted to force some people to watch that scene in a Clockwork Orange re-programming sort of way.

Skeet-shooting at someone else's happiness is easy, low, and despicable. Building up another person isn't much harder, and it produces none of the guilt tearing things down creates.

Why do some of us see our role not as cheerleader but as crepe hanger?

Who would choose to be in the presence of someone who thinks his or her calling is to pop balloons?

Who would give that person a radio call-in show?

Any time you look at the clock and groan, that’s a pretty clear sign.

Any time you hear your boss coming and think, “Oh geeze,” that’s a pretty clear sign.

Any time you give said boss the opportunity to jump to your defense with a statement along the lines of, “She did exactly as I directed her to do,” and instead, said boss smiles blithely and blinks like a puppy in the sunshine while you twist slowly in the wind, it’s a pretty clear sign.

When you start sitting in the john for long periods because it's the one place where no one will bother you for ten minutes because you’re going to scream if you have to spend another eight hours smiling when you want to let that scream fly, that, it would seem, is also a clear sign.

When you start imagining involved scenarios in which fictional folks with the same initials as some who’ve given you grief fall face first into cow dung—-the wet, fresh variety-—that’s a likely indicator.

When you are grateful for a non-networked computer that the tech department isn’t keen on working on, that might be a clue.

When you start making lists of clear signs, it’s over.

My emailed message from the Universe said it’s funny how real all of this extended dream we’ve chosen for ourselves feels. My dream even has dueling mockingbirds that started singing just as I typed that. I dream in detail, baby.

So what if I make this a lucid dream and just drive away? What If I chuck it all and see what my subconscious creates next? I could. All that stops me is fear of bad dreams.

It IS a lucid dream. I AM directing the movie from here.

My movie will now shift to a remake of Off the Map and a story of self-sufficiency and the life of a hermit who doesn’t need anything but high speed internet access and a source of water to survive. My movie is about a woman who makes an obscene amount of easy money from her brilliant writing and her witty repartee on radio talk shows. (That way she doesn’t have to work out or buy fancy clothes or pay for highlights in her hair.)

She generates her own power, grows her own food, trades her skills in writing, layout and design, and photography for everything else she needs. She travels the world and get paid to do it.

And when those who have mistreated her slink out of their caves to ask for favors, she tilts her head compassionately, reminds them of their long lists of transgressions against her, and asks them what they would do if the situation were reversed. Then she gives them more than what they asked for on condition that they pay the kindness forward and bring her proof of such action.

Revenge through altruism. Gotta love that.

How much of my near-constant funk is self-indulgent crap? How much is chemical? How much is legitimate reaction to difficult situations? How much is the angst of squelched creative genius?

80%, 10%, 9% and 1%.

At least now we’ve cleared THAT up.

I went to traffic court for a speeding ticket.

Court is like the DMV: it’s a place full of people I don’t see anywhere else. I sat there trying to look respectable and innocent and wishing that I’d taken more time with that. The fluorescent lights are not flattering.

The police officers and state troopers sat on one bench looking bored and mumbling jokes to each other. The attorneys seemed to be competing with each other to see who could carry the shabbiest leather attaché case. It’s guaranteed that if there’s a bow tie in the room, it’s on an attorney. They all laughed and joked, too.

I watched them laugh while I sat there hoping I was in the right courtroom. My ticket said I should report to courtroom 002, but the courtrooms were labeled A and B. I was nervous, and I resented how chummy everyone on the other side of the swinging gate seemed to be. How could I get a fair shake when they were clearly already colluding against all of us on the benches?

People were in a line handing papers to people behind the gate, and I didn’t know if all of us were supposed to do that. I asked a woman next to me, and she didn’t know either. She got up and left. A young man in a black vinyl jacket sat really close to me after she left. There was no one else on the bench, and I wondered why he scooted so close to me. Did I give off a maternal vibe that made him feel better?

The doors at the back of the courtroom were closed, and a bailiff warned all the men that they’d be held in contempt if their shirts weren’t tucked in. Women were warned to keep their midriffs covered. If those were the baseline criteria, I was okay.

The bailiff warned us that during the “call for the calendar”—which wasn’t defined for us—no one would be allowed to leave or enter the courtroom. We were instructed to plead guilty or not guilty when our names were called.

That was a puzzle. I wasn’t arguing that I wasn’t going 40 in a 25 mile per hour zone. I was just hoping that it would be thrown out because my record was so good otherwise. I didn’t get much time to think about a strategy because the names were called alphabetically and mine was one of the first called. I said “guilty,” even though I wanted to say, “That’s the judge’s call, isn’t it? What do I know? YOU GUYS are the experts here!”

A few people asked for court-appointed attorneys, and I thought it was totally unfair that no one said that was an option for our answers. I wanted a free attorney, too.

After the full list of defendants was read, a list of the ones who’d asked for attorneys was read, and those people had to come to the rail, where the bailiff had lined up Bibles. (How about the Torah? The Koran? The Upanishads?) The defendants figured out their right from left, shared the Bibles in a big linear game of Twister and were sworn in. The bailiff rattled off a half-mumbled statement that I mostly couldn’t make out that warned them of some circumstances that would result in having to reimburse the state of North Carolina for the attorney’s fees. Maybe it was just as well that I didn’t have an attorney appointed by the court. They were given pieces of paper to sign and sent to the clerk’s office across the hall.

I wondered if I was supposed to go pay my fine since I had pled guilty, but I stayed put, just in case.

Several bigger infractions were called before the judge—DUIs and driving on suspended licenses. These were people with court-appointed attorneys.

I was annoyed at how hard it was to hear the judge. I thought how unnecessarily baffling and stressful court was, and how even so, I still wouldn’t want to go to court in most other countries.

Then my name was called. I walked through the gate and stood where the attorneys had been for all the people before me. The judge was a well-known man in the region with a reputation for giving juveniles unvarnished, tough-love responses. I hoped he recognized me from taking his picture when he spoke to middle schoolers a month or two before. He also has a reputation for hugging every woman in the room outside of court. I’d been hugged when he visited the school. Shouldn't that count for something?

He asked if I had anything to say. I said I didn’t argue that I was going 40, but that I was preoccupied and hadn’t seen the signs. My voice shook, and I was mad at myself for not feeling more in control. I was explaining that I had a good driving record and no prior moving violations in North Carolina when the Dougie Howser district attorney interrupted and asked if he could speak to me.

I started to walk around the table, but I stepped toward the judge, and the bailiffs quickly closed ranks around him and told me to go the other way. I was a threat to the judge; who would have thought?

The DA said he thought I’d had a previous assignment to driving school. When I said no, he said he’d reduce the charges from speeding to faulty equipment. That only saved me $5 in fines; it was still $135 I couldn’t afford to spend. But it wasn’t a moving violation and wouldn’t make my insurance go up.

They wouldn’t let me take my knitting into the courtroom, so I got my yarn and needles back from the deputy in the lobby and took myself to lunch. I paid attention to the speed limit signs.