It is my path

There is no way to resist it

There is no need to rush it

It will be walked regardless

This is my path, and it's an important one. I have strong healing powers within me that want to be activated. It doesn't even feel like I have to "learn" so much. They mostly require to be activated.

For the sake of my mission. For the sake of humanity. For the sake of spirit. I have always known I was here to serve humanity in some form. Although I have often tried to look in the other direction. I had not found a way to work with people that was both efficient and not draining. When I was giving psychotherapy, meditation therapy or massage therapy, subconsciously I felt that this was nothing compared to the ancient wisdom stored inside of me. Often I deeply felt that I will be able to have strong psychic and healing abilities, but that definitely scared me. I was for sure not ready for that. All I wanted was to be in peace and to live a joyful life.

The mission that I felt strongly in my heart, the force that was pulling me up, the urgency to grow, felt too much at times. As if I was saying: "I am not ready for something that big." Suddenly we are here in the journey, and I am ready. Do I feel ready with my whole being to gain insight into my soul's purpose and to open up my gifts? Hells nah. Most of the times, yes. But it is not easy. Even though I feel deeply in my heart that I want to give my love and healing powers to the people, I am also afraid to work with people. Because in my mind it is associated with being drained, too much heaviness and giving too much of myself. These associations have been established in past lives and in this lifetime.

We are however not there anymore. I have learned to love myself first. There are a few deep wounds around self-love I have yet to heal. But in general, I love me, I know my boundaries, and I respect my boundaries. I know how to stand up for myself, and I know how to accept and love myself when I feel tired and need rest.

Another sign that proves my work on "the empath wound" is that I do not become weak when I listen to people's darkness. When I hear their stories I empathize and I see that they are part of the larger whole. We need suffering in order to grow. After having faced so much darkness inside of myself, transmuting it to light and seeing how it has strengthened me, I am no longer afraid of the dark. Neither when it concerns other people nor the planet. I feel the heaviness in my human heart, but in my whole being, in my spirit, I deeply know that all this, is happening for us, not to us.

I am a strong light, continuing to shine stronger and brighter. Only the darkness could have made that possible for me. The darkness is not a past, closed chapter. It an integrated force, part of nature. Something that I know and walk through with ease. When dark entities visit me, I feel the tension inside of me, but I know love. I choose love. And I know that they are just dense energy that also need love. So I make space for it and I trust myself that no matter how many dark entities surround me, I am love, I am safe, and I cannot be harmed. And that is all one needs to learn to be able to walk through the dark. This journey is not about turning our back on the dark and trying to look for light. Our journey is about shaking hands with it, realizing that you are the light and ultimately seeing that there is a light hidden in that darkness too. That darkness is a costume. It is light pretending to be dark. It uses this costume to create a sense of contrast and duality here on earth, offering the opportunity for spirit to evolve. Darkness is only dangerous when you keep seeing it as evil and believing it to be a true part of yourself, thus giving it the power to feed on you. You have to realize that you yourself are the light and the power. It is the journey to this deep realization that leads to more enlightened states.

I need to work with humans. My life will never feel whole and complete if I don't, cause I won't be standing in my soul's purpose. It is going to give me energy, fulfillment and joy. However, I need to fill my own cup first.

Here comes in the importance of my own happiness. I have to allow the universe to serve me with a stable support of joy, freedom and abundance underneath my feet. For too long I have separated living a happy and joyful life with my deep purpose to make an impact. As if the two could not co-exist. These two necessities and desires are both integral and cooperating aspects in my journey. There is no way back from this realization now. Fulfilling my soul's purpose would not be possible without the abundance and freedom that I so desire.

As a psychic, channel and energy healer I receive much more information than most humans. I need my own space, I need my van to roam free and feel inspired. My time to meditate for insights and processing information. My time in nature to recharge and connect. Strong, spiritual friendships for laughter and support. Time to express my internal experience creatively. Money to support all of this. I need to give myself the highest degree of love and freedom so that I am able to give the highest degree of love and freedom to the people I am meant to work with.

I need the energy of love, joy, fun, dance, wonder, beauty, passion and deep peace to then pour that into my work. My happiest self is my strongest, most radiant and most influential self.

The love that I give to myself and the love that I give to others can no longer be seen as separate. They are fulfilling the same purpose: the highest good.

Hello there,

My name is Lisa. I am 25 years old. And I have psychic abilities. I am at the point in my life where my soul, mind and body are ready to open up to this. It would take me hours to write how I came to this point. But I can describe the context as it is now. I reached a sense of inner peace that has been present for months now. Not only that, I also moved to the north of Norway two and a half weeks ago. Away from the overstimulating city, and reunited with my love, the northern nature. Pretty soon after I arrived, I started to get some hints. That now was the time. That I had reached the level of *readiness* that is required for the next stage in my journey.

Lately, I've been expressing my personal and spiritual journey more in the online space, particularly Instagram and YouTube. But what's currently happening inside of me, requires focus. It's a vulnerable topic, that is believed by few, and I cannot let external energy seep into this part of my journey. That's what I learned today when I shared the topic with my brother and my mother. With people who are there with a lot of love, but who are not there in spiritually. I understand them. The skepticism, the unbelief. They are particularly skeptical because I am entering an online Soul Alignment program with a channeler and energy-healer that costs quite a lot of money, to say the least. So they are afraid that the money won't outweigh the value of the program. But how can I explain that I know with my whole soul that this is the right program for me? I can't. Or, I can, and I did, but that doesn't sound particularly convincing to them. Which I fully and completely understand. It hasn't been too long ago - maybe about four years - that I still believed that when we die, we rot in a our grave, and that's it. That people who believed in spirituality and religion were a bit naive. So who am I to judge people who judge? We have our own beliefs. We are in different stages of the spiritual journey. Plus, there are different things to awaken to, depending on your soul's journey and purpose. Some wake up to extraterrestrial beings. Some wake up to the spirits of the dead. Some follow a more shamanistic path. Others go the Buddhist way. My closest soulfriend and I recently took distance because we are both awakening seriously and we are here with a strong purpose. She takes the Buddhist path, and I, well, I don't think I can put it in a few words, and I have yet to discover what the heck is about to happen in my journey. But, yeah, nature, the spirit realm and energy healing are involved. So that sounds quite shamanistic doesn't it? But, I can't and I won't put my journey in a box. I do not like boxes, they are limiting.

So as I was saying, by talking to my closest family about this very delicate topic, I let external energy inside. What do I mean with that? Every thought and emotion carries electromagnetic energy. Energy is information. After having talked with them, their beliefs are tangible inside my mind and body, disconnecting me from my inner knowing, disturbing my energy, confusing my mind, and blurring my vision. Because this is not an easy journey. It takes me a lot of courage and going through the fire of anxiety to push through with this. I do not have another option, and I think that is something that people who are not going through a spiritual awakening, have a hard time understanding. Yes there is this top-down process where I have the mindset to grow and to awaken as much as possible. But also that, is driven by a strong bottom-up force that has been driving my journey all along. It's like taking a decent dose of psychedelics. It's not like *you* go on the journey. The psychedelic takes you on the journey. Just like the awakening takes me on this journey. And this part of my awakening...dear lord. My ego is shaking her head: "Spirit guides? Angels? Akashic records reading? Psychic abilities? Really? Could it *get* more spiritual?"

And my soul is saying: "I am sorry babes, but yes, it can get more spiritual. You better surrender, cause we have a lot in store for you." "Oh my", my ego says.

I am going all in. And again, this is as much a conscious choice as it is just the force inside of me that is pulling me to that which has to be done. But for this part of my journey, I have to close the door to others. However, I still feel a strong urge to document this journey and share it somewhere. So I thought, why not use my dear account on Prose? Where I can share anything, and at the same time be invisible.

It so happens that I had a little surgery on my foot and that I cannot work for ten days. I have to "rest". Divine timing. What happens when a person is forced to rest? One has to surrender to the feminine. Being, feeling, sensing. And what resides in the divine feminine? Magic. I thanked the universe when I heard that I should not walk on my foot too much for ten days. I looked in the mirror, and smiled, "I know what to do".

I came home from the hospital, sat down in my bed, and typed into the YouTube search bar: "Open up psychic abilities meditation". I did a few meditations and went to sleep with a happy heart. One hour later, I started to hear many birds, ravens more specifically, through my right ear. The exact ear where I felt a kind of stingy sensation during one of the meditations. My whole face trembled from the inside out, as if I am channeling an animal, kind of like a lion or a bear that is roaring. I also started to see some images, I don't remember them quite well because they were vague. But it had to do with nature and I saw a lake.

I realized that I had to completely surrender this time. These kinds of phenomena are not entirely unfamiliar to me. I finally understood why I've been experiencing sleep-paralysis since 2018 and trippy dreams since last year. It is because I am psychic, and information tries to come through me.

My foot starts to really hurt now. The anesthesia is wearing off. What were the doctors thinking to not send me home with painkillers? I have these light paracetamol pills. Maybe I should take a few, and try to fall back asleep.

Either way I think I am about done with writing for today. You will hear more from me. Writing about this is very therapeutic. My first official session of the Soul Alignment program is November 26th. But I think a lot is going to happen in between.

I am going to leave you for now, and I send you much love, because you took the time to read all the way to here <3.

Will be continued...

Guilt hovers like a storm cloud when it comes to doing the things that we want to do. Not what we need to do, but the little moments in life that fill us with indescribable happiness. And not that I don’t feel happiness and liveliness throughout my day-to-day, because that isn’t a fair assessment of the life that I’ve spent so many years building. However, the routine of everyday life can breed monotony, and a feeling that you want to live. To truly grasp what it means to be alive, and experience something so filled with magic that you can almost believe in forces beyond those of the natural world.

It’s called enjoying the fruits of your labour. It answers the question of why you put in the hard work that you do, beyond simply surviving. You work to provide. Shelter, food, power. But you also work in hopes of escaping the often torturous malignancy of a brain that seems to work at the opposite end of a rope during a never-ending match of tug of war.

And for me, magic in its purest form is music. On weekends, after a long week of work, I put my favourite records on the turntable and sit in a small loveseat that I purchased for a mere 40 bucks on marketplace. I crack open a beer after the needle has been placed on the grooves, and the music starts and I close my eyes. It’s magic. It’s a time machine. It’s a world of endless possibilities, where a man can come to a fork in the road and explore multiple possibilities.

I can see a world where I chased my dreams of being a rockstar. I’m standing in the cold like I did so many years ago. I have a guitar case in my hand, and a fake leather jacket draped over a chequered plaid shirt. There’s an ominous January wind coming off of the river that in later years will fill me with dread, but on this evening, it does not because I’m playing my first rock and roll show.

I can listen to the music of Bruce Springsteen and feel my blue collar veins like roots from my family tree. Each story impactful and meaningful. The realisation that perhaps I’m one of the less fortunate dreamers from a rock and roll song, but also that maybe my life is as important as it gets. Like I said, the music is magic and the soft burn of the alcohol as it descends my throat into the pit of my belly, makes me feel lighter, like a feather but also heavy, depending on my mind set when I decide to crack open that can.

I tell my wife, “We need to see the boss live.” She agrees, and although there’s much discrepancy in our tastes in music, Bruce Springsteen is not one of them. She loves him, and we sing along to Badlands, and Adam Raised A Cain, and Prove It All Night in the car as we drive through town. Her as much a character in one of his songs as I am. Some days I look at her and see us as the two young protagonists of Born To Run, singing “I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul.” And then some days I look at her sad and defeated, living a life that isn’t so much living but just a conscious shadow walking through life feeling unseen and unheard. I think she resembles more the love interest in Racing in the Street, than she does Wendy from Born to Run. “She sits on the porch of her daddy’s house but all her pretty dreams are torn, she stares off alone into the night with the eyes of one who hates for just being born.”

Then the day comes where I buy tickets to his show in Montreal at the Bell Centre on Halloween night. Because of illness and fatigue, the show has been postponed a full year, so the rescheduled date has finally arrived and I can’t believe it’s here. I came so close to selling the tickets many times with a belief that the show would never happen.

We wake up that morning, get the kids ready for school, and then drop them off. They’re sad that we’re leaving and that storm cloud of guilt is hovering so close to my head that I can feel individual strands of hair meeting it like an electrical current. But we never take time for ourselves, and it’s been longer than I can remember that my wife and I sat alone in a car and acted like two people who fell in love before kids and mortgages entered the picture. “I promise this will be the only year we won’t take you trick or treating, okay?” I say to my kids, who are understanding. Their grandpa is going to take them, anyway. They aren’t going to miss out on Halloween.

We drive to my in-laws’ place to drop off car seats and tell them a couple of last-minute things about their few days with the kids. My mother-in-law smiles and says that she raised kids before, and she’s pretty sure she can handle it. She tells us to have fun and to drive safely.

After that, we grab coffee and we hit the road. We have a 10 hour drive ahead of us, but the day is young; the air is warm, and the sky seems undecided about whether it wants to provide us with sunshines, or hard rain. Before the drive is finished, we’ll get doses of both.

It feels strange just the two of us alone in a car. It's like a first date. She places her hand on my thigh and smiles at me. I can feel the poison being extracted from my body and in those moments on an open road with a warm cup of coffee, I ask myself, Why do we fight? We’re living similar lives and going through similar stresses, and that should bring us closer together, like the music of the boss does. When you find something that you have in common, you hold on to it; you bear hug it into submission, because if it gets loose, everything feels empty. So, again, I ask. Why do we fight?

For the first few hours, we don’t play music or the radio. We just talk. We’re excited about the concert because it’s been ten years in the making, but we’re trying not to get too excited until we get closer to our hotel, and until we actually get into the arena.

And even when we’re not talking, it isn’t an uncomfortable silence, it’s just silence where our heads are saying, Wow, there actually is silence in this world. It’s peaceful. I like it.

A few times, I can see her through my peripherals, and she’s smiling. She’s smiling the way she used to smile when I had a microsecond when I was going somewhere. When I’d get up on a small stage in a dingy bar with my acoustic guitar and my words and close my eyes and sing. I’d open them and she’d be at a table with friends and a drink that usually featured one, if not several colours of the rainbow, and she’d just smile.

Then, when the show was finished, I’d order a pitcher or two of beer and feel good. Feel happy that even if my music didn’t change the world, that at least, I put it out there. That was all a person could do.

And after we were both good and drunk, we’d stumble our way back to my apartment, and feel all the things that a person should feel. Those things that make you realise as clear as day that there is life and there is living.

And as the years go on, those smiles don’t appear as much. Those pleasures go through periods of such brevity that you forget how special that connection can be. And I don’t think that a concert will save a marriage, but I think Springsteen has been the soundtrack for our entire relationship, and that sitting together, just the two of us and hearing a 50 year catalogue in the space of three hours will let us escape into a place we used to go so often when we were younger.

The drive isn’t without its complications, because of heavy traffic and a GPS that ceased to work during crucial moments of finding our hotel, but we do arrive and we get to the show when the doors open.

My wife isn’t feeling great because she doesn’t always travel well, and the added stress of the last hour of driving had her feeling weak and sick. I was getting nervous as the show approached that she wasn’t going to enjoy it, or that she was going to throw up and have to leave.

But she powers through. We find our seats and wait for the show to begin. I still feel that heaviness sitting in my chest like an inability to relax and enjoy the moment. The anxiety is there like it so often is, but I’m still hopeful that the show will allow that feeling to subside. That it will truly allow me to live in the moment and nowhere else.

She still looks sick and unhappy that she’s making me unhappy, but I’m not. I just want her to enjoy the show and not remember it, only for the way she was feeling.

7:30PM, the show begins. We’re behind the stage, but we have full access to the huddle and prayer that the band gives before each show, and we get to see Springsteen walk on stage to a roaring crowd of over 20,000 people. All those years, saying that I needed to see him live and wondering if I ever would, because the rock stars from the 70s are now in their 70s, and like the boss says, “once you get older there are a lot more yesterday’s than tomorrows” fade away. Because there I am, watching him count off the band 1! 2! 3! 4! And the music starts, and it’s life. It’s life in its purest form.

It takes me three to four songs before I get over the shock of staring down at one of my biggest musical heroes, but once I do, it’s magic. My wife begins to feel better and I can see her staring down at him with a look of awe on her face. The pain is going away and is being replaced with magic.

As the band goes into Atlantic City, I can feel myself going back to the first time that I heard the song. Just a university student who’d recently started buying Springsteen albums. I was in my room listening to Nebraska when the second song came on. From the first seconds of, well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night. I was gone, baby gone.

I showed it to a friend I was playing music with and then showed it to my wife. And I was like, this is it.

This is what?

I don’t know, but this is it.

During those shows where my wife smiled at me, the way she did during the early stages of the drive. It’s all there. I’m here now, but I’m somewhere else too. I raise my hands with the crowd and I look around and I see stories. I can read them in their eyes. There are hardships in those eyes. There are worlds of people who kill themselves to survive. I can feel it.

There are two old men sitting next to us, perhaps the same age as the band, maybe younger or older. It’s hard to tell. But they’re seasoned in this world. They close their eyes and move their heads and they’re lost in it. Then when the encore comes, and it’s time to dance with the lights on, they get up and sway like they’re in their living room all alone. But it’s wonderful, it’s thousands of people doing the same thing. Our lives so different, yet so much the same, in that we all seek respite from days and nights of hardships. We all seek those moments where we live, not only exist. Where we’re using our time and living in it.

And it’s there. I can feel the weight getting lighter and the air going into my lungs easier. And I know that there are things I’ve done that I’m not proud of. There are moments where perhaps I would have chosen another path and seen where it took me, and I wonder, but doesn’t everybody? Is there anyone on planet earth that is happy with every choice they’ve ever made since they were old enough to make them? I doubt it. I sincerely doubt it.

But with music, is the power to understand that the world is filled with people who go through hardships. And the right music will tell you it also, Ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive. And that I wanna spit in the face of these badlands.

There are lyrics that tell us I’ve done my best to live the right way, I get up every morning and go to work each day. But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold. Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode.

But the same song can also tell you: There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor. I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm.

The songs are about hard times, but hard people too. That you can feel weak, like you’re going to explode, and that sometimes your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold, and that’s life. That’s life in all of its pain and glory. It’s right there. It tells you that you need to feel pain to understand the beauty of an evening without any of it.

That you need to come face to face with yourself, and especially a version of yourself that is bent on tearing down those walls that keep your sanity intact. But the songs will also tell you that the bad doesn’t always win.

Throughout the three hours of that show, I felt life the way it was meant to feel. Not always, but the way it feels for the people who lay down their lives every day, and who need a moment to say, yeah, this is fun and I’m not the only one who feels this way. There are 20,000 people here singing these songs and closing their eyes and drifting away into a world where the bad is put into submission by the power of community. By the power of love. And even as someone who is neither religious nor spiritual, you can’t deny something higher than ourselves in the rhythmic swaying and dancing of a sold-out crowd who all understand the difference between existing and living. Who are choosing, if only for a short while, to fully live and to fully experience what it means to feel your heart pound in your chest, to feel the blood flow through your veins, to allow yourself a moment where you can be vulnerable. Cry if you want to cry. Dance if you want to dance. Sing as loud as your heart desires because that is what magic is for.

And on the drive back, we listened to Springsteen music, and we reflected on an important evening. An evening where we spent time not just as mom and dad but as two adults who loved each other long before our lives changed, and wanted to make sure that it was all still there. And it was.

Sometimes we fight and ask if we’re only together for the kids. But it was nice to get away and realise that we do love each other. That we could still eat a romantic dinner on either side of a small table and look at each other and talk.

And then after another day of endless miles of open road, we finally made it back home. And as soon as the door opened, the kids came running out, hugging us in excitement and we know that our life is hard but it’s rewarding, and although there are days and sometimes weeks where we’re likely not doing much other than surviving, there is always magic around the corner. You just need to find it, see it, and make sure that when it comes, you’re living in it.

My body is heavy as I drag it, even to sit up to type.

Drag it to my car. Drag it through work. Through emotions I'm sure I'd feel,

A mimic replicating, yet in my own flesh still.

Hopefully someone calls for a priest, or a torture, or something to make me feel like I'm myself again,

I stare at the screen- nail marks my own on my cheeks burning in the light.

I do not know how to write. Yet is has always been the only thing I've ever known.

What shall I say? What topic shall I choose?

Tapering from a medicine I've known all my sentient life?

Emotional abuse from the one I've trusted beyond all for years?

Sadness that I cannot sell my novel?

Apathy at my lack of trying?

It is not burnout. Perhaps I am jaded. Perhaps cynicism. It will wear off like a scab eventually. Until then, I have no creativity. No art. No words. Nothing important or anything to care for.

Man, am I the greatest author to exist. Wordless and mouthy like the most infamous.

Stifled, burning embers extinguished, spark-less, lifeless and caged

We wither away, rotting, rotting like we too are being consumed

By more than what life has thrown, by a society igniting matches

Then shouting down that we burn too brightly, stomp him out, make her cease

Fire that cannot be controlled shall be removed, taken elsewhere

To burn through centuries of kindling in far away places

And the government, they hope the smoke never seeps home

That all that remains is dust, stomped down so deep we forget what it felt like

To briefly be burning, alight, consumed by more than cast away decay

But even specks sparkle in sunlight, if the wind wafts in just right

We may float, illuminated by the source of all heat

Remembering what we could be, before the boot crushed us beneath it.

Ashes to ashes, flame begets flame, suppressing fires only makes the burn

Uncontrolled, unceasing like how one may yearn

Simply to live untethered to social niceties, to clocks

That yield and rank us too much, always creating shocks

At how young a fire can be, how kindling doesn’t need a century’s suppression

As youth carries with it one’s first oppression, the boot’s first footprint.

I don’t want to die.

I pause at the sight of a gap between greenery, a child's park and graves. I stare at them. The graves, that is.

I don’t want to die. My grandma has bought a slot in the desolate walls- she showed me the general area. Made a comment about the free single above her for my mother and a double for her sister and her husband beside it.

I step back.

I walk. It’s dark. It’s scary: no one is meant to be out at this hour. There’s no lights in this child's park, perhaps a testament to their bedtime or an unassuming way of living where the night is for rest.

There’s the gasp of something in the distance. Maybe a coyote. Maybe a ghost. Maybe not a thing. I’m not sure.

I walk along uneven terrain where I know parties occur, scuffed ground from family vans and the tire marks of a forgotten turn likely to the tune of an angry passenger. The only sound at this hour is my foot on gravel and the crinkling plastic of a chip bag in hand.

I sit on sun-burnt grass, my feet on pavement and a cigarette in hand. It burns me in the way that it shouldn’t be in my hand; though the lit tip doesn’t burn me. My back is to the dark park. No one around; no cameras or people. My adrenaline spikes, soothed by only the random sound of cars passing by.

I sit here, remembering the times I’ve gotten off the bus as a child. The one time I sat in the nearly barren creak, so deep within the earths core it practically molded to fit me.

I hear the scream of coyotes. Make my way home.

Coyotes are afraid of flashlights. I’m afraid of my own shadow.

I grip the handle of my knife, cool sure metal, more sure to use it against another person then an animal.

Start a jog though it’s burned short by liquor in my veins, scalding and viscous. I spin around unevenly. I'm by the graveyard, which I trust the blades shadow is scary, but. It’s only covered in drywall as it try to gain a sample of paint from the wall for my mom. I can imagine it kissing my lateral muscle.

Ones I work hard for. My heartbeat clings, even as I’ll calm beneath the safety of overhead street lights. I hear the faint scream again, a bit off of the graveyard. Pay my respects silently; terrifyingly.

I look over my shoulder more than I don't, veering off my home path. There’s a beer in my pocket for enjoyment though I feel no inkling to drink it. I’m speeding up though the ache in my calves from wearing heels a few days ago is present: I pass a truck that is tinkering with the sounds of recently powering down thought it hasn’t moved in days.

My breath quickens, I see the bush that marks my nearness to home. I exhale sharply, checking anxiously around me before I turn, feeling much too like a person in an indie horror game with how I stumble into trash cans.

The lights from neighbours homes are off orange, glowing faintly but not enough to light the street. I’m near home but don’t stop panicking and my shins ache, begging me to slow but I don’t.

It is when I see the lights of my home that I exhale, check over my shoulder again. See my car. Check in its windows. I swallow stiltedly as I sit down in one of our lawn chairs, confident my dog isn’t barking to give way to my departure or arrival. My heart beats hard but I divert my attention to the calm, familiar sound of the plains flying overhead, heading to the airport nearby. I breathe in the scent of the rose bushes.

I relax. For now. Until my next episode.

Each morning is a gift, the light unfolding in steady breaths over the landscape, reminding me that time is finite and precious. A part of me feels this ticking inside, a reminder that seconds slip through my fingers the sand of an hourglass. How easy it is to forget! I scroll, I wait, I post, I wait, I watch, I wait. I let moments dissolve in the glow of a screen or the lure of idle worry, but something in me whispers, insists that these choices bear weight. I’ve made the choice to cut the cord to the inanimate world. Who likes what, and who shares what, who know what or learned this and has to publicly show they are better than others.

It’s all a blink, this life we’re given. One day I’ll be someone’s memory, a face in a photo, a story shared by someone who remembers me through their own lens. That’s what it is, really; whether we’re here, vibrant and alive, or a flicker in someone’s mind, time hums along, never slowing. Time cares not for our accomplishment, our titles, our successes or failures.

So I ask myself, what matters? How should I spend the gift of now? I think of the people I love, the quiet morning sun, the sounds of life around me. There are books I haven’t read, places I’ve never seen, parts of myself still hidden even from me. The idea that I’m a work in progress, that I might never “finish” but can still keep moving, creating, is somehow freeing.

No, I don’t want to waste a single day, hour, or minute. I want to feel the wind through my fingers, dig my hands into the earth, speak truth even when it feels like I’m shedding armor and vulnerable to the world and those around me. There are too many shades of life, of feeling, of connection, waiting for me to just begin. My time … and your time is now.

There are so many times everyday, where I lose myself to a daydream. So much detail, so much emotion. Like it could be truly real if only I knew how to reach out and make it so.

And then I'm dragged back, kicking and screaming into a reality where I've already given up most days. Where I'm just a guy with a head full of stories that no one can ever truly know.

I feel like if I really knew how to show them, people might be able to draw strength from them. To learn about themselves through the eyes and tongues of people they will never see. Places that agonizingly only exist in the naive and twisted psyche of just another human artist among infinite others.

I'd like that. I'd really like that.

But the war against myself takes up whatever time I might spend making my reality the kind of dream that I live out in my mind every single day.

A war with rules, no limit on the way that my mind commits untold war crimes on me every single day. The weight of every possible mistake multiplied by a margin so large that it loses meaning.

What kind of god would create a being that exists with the talent to bring impossible tales of wonder and growth to life, but is chained and tortured by that same talent, left alone on the outside of the things they create?

A stranger looking in.

Maybe I'm just another egotistical asshole. Who knows...

I don’t want to die bored. I don’t want to die tired, or even fat and happy. I don’t want to die when the cold wind slaps my body to the ground, my world upside down. I refuse to die still, or dried out with a permanent frown. I just can’t die tonight.

I want to die on fire. Electric. I’m going to explode my worth in all directions. I plan to light my world ablaze and die alive.

So I will take what I want, and do who I please. I’ll eat the flavors of every corner and always pull over to touch the water. I do not take the easy route, but I will take my time.

And after every mile I’ll absorb every experience, until I bubble and boil and burst my way out.

Clarence walked nonchalantly downtown, nothing especial to do, and while humming a tune he espied a placard between entrances to indeterminate establishments. It read:

Love Shopping? …seeking person or persons to pose in store incognito. $12 per survey.

He didn’t, particularly, love shopping, but the poster intrigued him. Was it a social experiment? A zealous competitor trying to undermine its opposition? A fraud baiting naïve-innocents with a non-fatiguing lure? But then again what was twelve bucks nowadays? A drink and a sandwich, and nothing fancy. So, how many survey’s were they talking about? Doing exactly what? His mind took a cynical bend.

He dialed the number walking. Having already paused too long, he took the call from a distance. Defensively posturing, as others might have presumed-- making a connection-- that he had been, maybe, suckered in.

He expected an automated service.

“Hello, Abott Marketing. How may I help you?” said a polite yet sultry voice of unspecified age, young but mature, or mature but youthful-- very attentive.

Now he felt a reproachful goofiness, a grown man seeking a shopping spree, not worth a dozen singles. And yet:

“Uh, yes. I’m responding to the advert posted,” he said feigning great interest, animating his tone a little extra, unnecessarily.

“What is your location?” she enunciated charmingly. Was he detecting an accent? He couldn’t quite place it. He craned his neck out from the shadow doorway he’d ducked into to better read the street sign:

“Corner of First and Boulder.”

“One moment…” and abrupt silence swept into music.

He started imagining how the face or body might match or contrast the vocal. The elevator tune raised an image of Jane Harlow, then turned a bit more Latina from Rita Hayworth to Victoria Monet, and then she was suddenly an overbearing trench with gorilla arms and low drawn hat not quite in any traditional shape, drooping and uniform grey, barely covering steely grey eyes.

“Ya’ rang?” he growled in a low hoarse whisper.

The wire went dead.

“Yeah. The… woman had me... on hold… “ he hung up and fixed his lip, emotionless.

“Ya’d be waitin’ a long time, heh, heh?” the cavalier sniggered at the dummy.

He had been taken in, a robocall, after all; and this was strange “personal” service.

Just how far was this farce going to evolve?

He kept a poker face. It was well-tanned apeman’s turn to make a false move.