A palimpsest (coming from words meaning 'scrape' or 'chew') is a manuscript that is written on a surface from which an earlier text has been partly or wholly erased. Palimpsests were common in the Middle Ages before paper became available, because of the high cost of parchment and vellum.

Taken in a figurative sense, the term is sometimes applied to a literary work that has more than one layer or level of meaning.

One abstract level up from that, a person could be considered a living palimpsest, since reincarnation overlays a new personality and body over an incompletely erased former personality. Young children often can tell adults about their former lives, especially seen in countries where such story telling isn't immediately dismissed and discouraged as fantasy.

We're palimpsests in other ways, too. If you scratch the surface of my city veneer, there's a farm girl just waiting for the sun to come up to feed the animals and weed the garden, tanned bare knees scratched from pitching hay and clothes slobbery from horses looking for goodies.

Scratch my home-abiding habits and there's a restless traveller, waiting for the next opportunity to venture toward new horizons.

Palimpsests in different ways we all are, layers upon layers of personality and purpose.

I'm thinking about a possible plot and these are the thoughts that bubbled up.