Ch. 5: Do you believe in something greater than yourself?

There are two guys on your two shoulders. Who do you listen to?

You know in movies when there’s a scanner of some sort that goes over a body or a hand or a fingerprint and reads it. That’s the only way I can describe the feeling that came over me or through me or somehow all around me as she took me under her spell.

I’m the first in line when it comes to willpower and I can do whatever I want as long as I set my mind to it and that sort of over-confidence that comes with youth and just a sense of control or at least I-don’t-care-enough-to-care-who’s-in-control, but this is what shifted. As this feeling of a scan went from my toes to the top of my head, I felt a transformation in that I no longer needed to leave the table. I wasn’t even neutral about coming or going, but by the time it sizzled through my head I now not only wanted to stay, for some reason, I needed to stay.

I no longer needed just the WiFi password from her, I had a sense that she had something greater to give me. Still a password of sorts, but it was much more important than WiFi. Although I didn’t yet understand it, I now needed to know what it was and I felt a pang to get to it at all costs.

Her face changed from someone who I had known all of a few minutes to someone I knew all my life or maybe all of another life. I made a silent note-to-self that I don’t have thoughts about knowing someone from another life. But that’s exactly what I felt. Although upstairs was a cup of tea and the WiFi and a little morning work in the cafe and back to our AirBnB before my family woke up, downstairs was now something I wasn’t sure I understood, but it was clear that I was going to stick around to find out.

Once again, she brought her hand over to the board of receipts and my eyes followed her hand to the board and as my vision rose up from her hand to the board, I wasn’t sure if I was focused or needed to blink a few times, rub my eyes, or if it was the clearest I had ever seen. The board was alive.

I blinked a few times. I rubbed my eyes. After all that, it was still the same. On Apple products, when you hold down an icon to delete or move it, it shimmers. Like an iPad, the receipts were shimmering on the board. Shaking gently, all inviting me, even calling out to me to choose.

If I felt earlier as if I had to choose a receipt because she wanted me to or even had a fleeting thought that I had to choose the right one to give me the WiFi password or, even more out there, that I now had none of those thoughts and somehow she was on my side, she wanted me to choose and I wanted to choose and in some way, I thought that I wouldn’t choose wrong but just different. But what did I know?

As I stared at the board and the receipts and they glistened and shook, I decided to stop. Just stop. Stop thinking, stop trying, stop figuring out and guessing. The morning had taken me over and for reasons that may never be clear to me, I was OK with it. I was more than OK with it, I was in an odd way relieved about it.

The black lettering of the receipts shattered like broken glass and fell into each other and formed straight, horizontal lines across the top and middle of the receipt. The lines were alive and moving like an educational video for kindergartners.

The blue ink of the passwords formed simpler lines as they connected as water does when drops approach each other. A blue river passing through the world of the black symbols, it snaked and swirled and pushed and helped the black to form into what it was becoming.

The blue line was the workhorse and the artist: pulling up here, pushing out over there, twisting and moving the black around the receipt. The black lines became sketches of hieroglyphics or symbols, each with the blue line passing through it as a critical element of its existence.

A single black squiggle became a tree and the blue a river below it. Another a staff with a ball of blue on top of it. A hummingbird with a streak of blue down its back. An elephant with the blue outlining one ear. A horizon with a blue soft hill. An eye with a blue teardrop pupil. A pathway with a blue line down its center. A flower with black petals but one blue.

I knew where to stop. I already knew as soon as I saw it. The road was exciting and the flower was pretty, but the eye couldn’t leave me alone. I went right back to it and felt at home. My fingers folded back as I reached up and my index finger went straight and I got closer and closer.

As though I had tunnel vision, I didn’t see her hand come over towards mine. I could only see my own hand and the board. She laid her hand on top of mine as I reached closer and closer to the board. Her palm rested softly on top of my own hand and with no pressure at all, she stopped my motion.

I was confused as it seemed the whole purpose of my being here was to reach to the board and pick my receipt. I remembered my vow to not think, to not analyze, to just let it go. If I started analyzing, none of it would make sense and might stop. I knew enough to realize that that was the last thing I wanted.

I turned my gaze to her. Her face this time was not only familiar but recognizable, although I couldn’t place her. It was as if she was as close as family, but had never met. Uh oh. She was closing her eyes.

No more brown. The yellow was back. But this wasn’t a blink or a wink. She kept her yellow eyes on me as if checking with me that it was safe. As if asking me if what she had in her yellow eyes was what I was looking for. My rational side popped up, I was looking for WiFi.

It was safe, it was what I was looking for. I blinked on my own. She was still there and her yellow eyes came through me and reached inside of me. It was my warning, it was my welcome, it was the memo so that I couldn’t ever say that I didn’t get the memo.

I returned my view back to her hand on top of my hand. I now could move my hand forward and I was heading straight for the black eye with the blue teardrop pupil.

It was within a hand’s length away, but I approached it slowly, deliberately. Another few moments and I would touch it. Her hand above mine twitched slightly and I stopped moving forward. She rested again on mine and I continued.

There was a flash through my mind that something was about to happen that I couldn’t reverse. An experience larger than what I knew or understood. There would be no turning back. These thoughts and ideas didn’t come from my mind but rather came through my finger, down my arm, and through my body and then into my mind. As if I was reading what was coming ahead before it was happening. I was almost there.

I held my breath. I was both excited and terrified at the same time. I realized, I just knew, that this moment would change me forever and although the idea was larger than me, I was ready and willing.

My rational little guy popped up onto my shoulder and whispered into my ear, ‘You know that you have absolutely not a shred of an inkling of an idea what you’re getting into, right?’

I smiled. I smiled so big that I would have started laughing at the impossibility and possibility of what I was about to do and how fearless I was in the face of change. I was doing the right thing and I knew it.

As if we were having a conversation, I answered the little guy on my shoulder.

“I know.”

My finger reached the receipt and connected.

Series Navigation

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