This past week has offered three brief moments when I feel I've peered behind the curtain...--Watching the live news on CNN. I answer a phone call - quick conversation - turn back to the television. And it's repeating. Not the story merely being covered again - that happens all the time with these looping news cycles...but literally, the television is repeating...same newscaster...same words...same bad joke at the same time... I check my DVR to make sure I have not hit rewind. Nope. Live. Again.
--The man at the gym. A very sweaty man. A very sweaty man who does the stair-mill nearly every day for over an hour without even listening to an iPod. He pours sweat onto the machine. Puddles form on the ground around the machine. And I guess it's gross but oddly, I have always found him to be an inspiration for endurance. Until I was doing the stair-mill next to him. About thirty minutes into my own workout, I feel a presence. A staring. I turn to the left. He is staring at me. A statue. Shark eyes. I get an image in my head -it bleeds into my physical seeing - he has a knife. He is butchering men in dark spaces. Gore everywhere. He comes back into focus, the macabre images returning to their dungeon. He does not look away. I look away. I look back. He is back to working out. And I know that a serial killer is sweating like mad on the machine next to me.
--Taking a walk through the neighborhood, the streetlamps start going out. This has happened before. Five in a row. As I pass them - within a foot of walking by - black out! Dark. After number five, I turn back to stare at the darkened street. I whisper, "light the way" - You see, I did this the first time at the Americana Apartments in Killeen, Texas when I was 7 and escaping the angry home of screaming Mom and new Dad - they went dark and I said, "light the way" - and they did. When I was 7, they came back on. All at once. And this time - 29 years later - I say the magic words again - and they do - they came back on...all at once.
What else is back there?
2 comments:
Indeed.
When I was 18, I wanted to move into a household of some friends, an in particular I coveted the bedroom of a guy named Dane, a carpenter. So I decided to start meditating on my being in the room -- happy there, excited to be in that house, etc.
After a few weeks of repeating this meditaion, I got a call from the longed-for house. Dane had an accident at work and lopped off two fingers on his right hand. He was going to be living with his parents for a long time; could I move into his room right away?
That's when I found out it is vital to BE SPECIFIC about your intentions.
How utterly fascinating. I love the idea of an unseen world at work around us and those brief glimpses we're afforded. I have this weird thing that's happened to me for years, where I'll wake up from a dream that seems particularly absurd--sometimes actually thinking "well, that'll never happen." And then five, seven years later, I'll be in a situation and remember vividly that I dreamed that exact moment. It's not deja vu--it's much more specific than that. Like anything, you get used to it, but once in a while, it'll still throw me, particularly if the recognition is particularly strong.
S
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