Sojourn Scenes

There was a series of balloons, three, that the wind blew in. They were black balloons w/the number seven on each. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but felt they were auspicious and on the side of positivity. Then I saw three number nines and felt the same way. But, I couldn’t tell for certain what the repeating numbers meant as I wasn’t a numerologist or highly into numbers to begin with. 

I saw a lady that reminded me of another lady I had once made fun of unfairly. I was immature and words had hurt the lady’s feelings but the lady either forgot or forgave me or buried it as she didn’t act as if it happened when I heard from her much later. That and one other thing were the only two things I worried about karmically. The other was that I had injured a hockey player and he was taken away in an ambulance. But it wasn’t done intentionally though several people thought it was. I hit him, which was allowed, but it the other injury was not done on purpose as he just fell on a bad angle. He turned out to be alright. I was glad for this. Those two things had happened practically another life ago as they say, yet they had bothered me. Other than those two events I felt clean, but like the numbers, it wasn’t possible from where I was standing to know for sure. 

You can’t always see the spiritual ledger. It is interesting that ledger also means a demarcation stone upon a grave because perhaps it not until we have a stone ledger that we can in the life review according to the canon of such experiences, see more accurately how our actions and words really affected others and the universe. 

I was low monetarily. The group in front of me was affluent and just exuded it. You can tell through intuition and life experience those who try to come off that way versus the actual.  When they left they forgot a purse leather green, the same colour as the jade some of them wore. Nobody noticed and they weren’t doubling back the way some people do when they realize they forgot something. There is about a five to ten second window you have to remember something is amiss before you have officially forgotten something. They were definitely leaving. I picked up the purse and went out the same door and called them back as they were getting into what looked like a new and definitely a tricked-up-decked-out high end SUV vehicle. 

‘Someone forgot their purse,’ I said, ‘holding it up.’ 

They came over and thanked me and took the purse. I returned it because it was the right thing to do. I went back to my seat in a booth, for booths are perhaps one of the greatest things ever created, and looked up through the adjacent window watching them leave. 

At a field there were streams cutting through like a water swath. I paused and stared at them, admiring the movement of water. I thought of Herman Hesse and his book. I had two copies of the famous work, but had given away the better, newer one. My old one was tattered and torn, plus coffee got spilled on it at some point. I didn’t know what that meant either. A large woodpecker that had been alighted in a nearby tree took off and I was frustrated that I had not had my camera out. Yet, I still admired its flight and the silhouette it made against the afternoon winter sunlight. 

I kept going around there. In the distance were train tracks but a train rarely as far as I could tell went by. There were large holes in the wall, the hillside, for the water to go under. It was a fine juxtaposition of water that appeared black against the snowy white sides. And then distant parts of the stream tumbled down a few feet in two places, bragging up its bits like cold clear and white flames and also many spark look a likes as if from a some giant sparkler. 

I went by a bookstore, an old used bookstore that I used to patronize. Proper gems could be found there and for inexpensive prices. Books were like treasures. But the store was gone, replaced by a work-wear store. The vests and coveralls mostly beige and black, stood looking back at me from the windows. It was as if the bookstore had never existed. Though on the outskirts of town, the perimeter purlieu, it had been a wealthy town, but didn’t have a new or used bookstore. I guess the world had changed.

So I headed back home and did chores, prosaic, mundane things, sometimes glancing out the windows as I moved about. There was nothing besides a puzzle on a dining room table, an old piano, and a painting on the wall. Also a bookshelf and coffee table by the couches beyond. The hardwood floor was weathered by time but had character and was still passable. I had never been a huge fan of the neighborhood or its dwellings, but it was clean and quiet and that counts for a lot. It was better than many other places. That view to outdoors didn’t hold a lot. A fence handsome that I had stained with a brush and roller, a good privacy fence as they called it, with lattice work up top that was not too plain and not too gaudy either. Snow was on the ground. It had been a long and cold snowy winter. I hoped the earth and sky really were pregnant with spring. A shed storing summer chairs and a table. On its door, there were two Ontario license plates and two Virginia ones. The first couple were from 1973, the year and place I was born, and the second set 1972, the year and place my beloved was born. Other than that, mostly just old barren branches waited out there, stoic and alone. 

One day with some luck, spring would finally start for myself and for them. 

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