I have a horrible mind. Things slip and slide and fall through it all the time. I've joked that my brain is like a sponge, in that it gets wrung dry every five minutes. One effect of this is that I am often tormeted by fragments. Sometimes I'll get things stuck in my head - a name, a face, a scene, a lyric, something with no immediate reference that I can't quite place. It'll go on and on, driving me crazy at random times. Often I'll come to it, eventually, after I had forgotten why it had occured to me in the first place.
This time it was a phrase. It popped into my head a few weeks (months?) ago and hadn't left, worming its way into my conscious, usually late at night (or early morning) as I try to fall asleep.
"I talk when I'm nervous - I mean, I talk like this when I'm nervous..."
It's female, a young woman, mid-20s probably, at the time. Some names kept coming and going - Sandra Bullock, Juilia Roberts, Minnie Driver, even Cate Blanchett - but none fit the bill. So on and on it goes, until suddenly -
I HAVE IT!
So I flop around on the bed, elated and do a few victory spins in the sheets. Now I can finally sleep properly!
IT'S FREAKIN' FRANKA POTENTE!*
*in The Bourne Identity