Echo

He was the greatest love of my life and he could not remember me.

Train station. Gray suit, black hat. He looked so sad coming in from the rain, I recognized him right away and nearly stumbled on the stairs in surprise. He was my quantum entanglement.

We went for coffee. Made small talk but mostly stared at each other. He had a beard now. He told me about his family, his background, his job. It had been 6 years since I last saw him and some things I already knew and some were new. He had an older sister with two German shepherds. He’d gotten married to a Russian chiropractor. He wore contact lenses now. He’d had a really rough day at work. He had large hands, graceful in their brute utility. I had an impulse to reach over and touch his hair just behind his ear to feel the wetness left by the rain. He asked me why I felt so familiar.

I talked about time and destiny, how time isn’t linear and this reality is a collective dream. Most people are sleeping but a few are awake. I told him the fallacy of reality is that people think reality is what happens to you, but you can create it. You can either be a character in a dream, or the dreamer. He agreed and was surprised—he’d never met someone who had these same private thoughts. I asked him what he thought about waking up. You could have everything that makes you happy, I said. He became excited at the idea but said he didn’t know what makes him happy. Me, I said. I make you happy. He gave me a shy smile.

We stood outside the diner, mesmerized by the rhythmic pounding of the rain against the street. I buried my hands inside his jacket and pressed my body into his, that beautiful body I knew so well. I’m married, he whispered, nervously. Still, he leaned in, breathing in my skin. The memory of what we were, are, and have always been blended into the present until I could no longer stand another moment of separation.

We made love in a nearby hotel. It is both starved and tender. After, I look him in the eyes and say, don’t forget me. And he laughs and says, how could I.

But he does. He always does.

when I wake, you will not remember me.

I awaken to find myself alone in my own bed. I check my phone to find I’ve slept through nearly the entire day. I scramble to the train station. I need to see him. I have no idea when the next time will be. He enters with the evening rush just as he had before. Gray suit. Black hat. Looking so sad my heart swells. I take him in, engraving a portrait to memory with the smell and feel of us, together, from the night before, from the lifetimes before. He notices me staring and we make eye contact, his eyes widening into a question, a flicker of recognition. I turn away and when I turn back, he is gone.Walking away from me, swallowed by the sea of bodies.

He is the greatest love of my life. We have crossed paths hundreds of times, since childhood. But every time we get close, time resets us.

I always remember. And he always forgets.

I need to write down all the thing that have happened that have been odd.

1.  Couple of weeks ago, I found this post:

And this…is my future life partner. Stable, kind. A fair leader. Earth behaving as Water. The soulmate I get to walk a large part of my journey with. He has always come up consistently for years. I really can’t explain to you how all this works, but his energy drops in on me sometimes, whoever he is.  Original post here.

So I realized I haven’t looked at my tarot cards in years so why not go take a look at it and see if it provided any clues. I took out the deck and shuffled through them, came across my card (Princess of Disks) and threw it on the ground. I got through the whole deck and Prince of Disks was missing!

I panicked because this was the one card I was looking for and also one that means a lot to me. Throughout my life, how close or far away this card was was an indicator to me if I was on the right or wrong track. I thought when I had Adrian, that he was my Prince of Disks so I stopped looking at my cards. And I also stopped having dreams of the man before time, so I thought I had found what I was looking for. But then I had those 2 dreams within days of each other of the man before time and they shook me because the man was not Rene.

So I’m panicking and shuffling through the deck again. Not there. I’m looking around, then see that the card is ALREADY OUT:

This spooked me. I put the cards side by side:

I forgot that we are suited. I had previously identified with the Queen of Swords, the one who rips masks off of untruth. But as I got older I transitioned to Princess of Disks.

So I’m looking at it and the way I read the Prince of Disks card is this:

He’s yoked to manual labor even though he is a prince, and carries this box inside a universe thinking he’s trapped inside the box. One day he will realize what he rides is a chariot not a plow, and he is the architect of the universe in which he holds, not trapped within it.

I notice that the chariot is black and start thinking about how he drives a black truck. It is being pulled by a bull. I try to remember what kind of truck he has and over the next few days, I’m studying trucks. There’s the Dodge Ram that has a ram in the front, but it doesn’t count because it should be a bull not a ram. So it has to be a Toyota, as that’s the only truck that has the Taurus symbol on the grill. So I don’t see him for over a week, and one day I see his car parked as I drive by. I’m almost breaking my neck to see what kind of truck it is, and it’s a TOYOTA TUNDRA.

2. I was laying in bed on Wednesday night (10/23), and I remember that energy thing that happened in Taiwan, where I reached out and touched the sky and it rippled, so I almost pulled myself out of this world into the one where I’m a bigger version of me and sleeping, and everything inside this world is a dream. So I wanted to try again. So I put my hand up and tried to touch the sky. I felt it load up with energy and get bigger and bigger. Suddenly Rene sat up in bed with his head turned towards me, his eyes open. I thought he was awake and watching me so I got embarrassed and put my hand away. He laid back down and was snoring, so I’m not sure if he was awake or not.

I went back to it. I wondered if I could touch him. I assumed he was on the other side of the moon so I watched my  hand grow and grow then reach up and reach through the moon and felt his heartbeat in my hand. Suddenly Adrian shrieked and began to cry, sitting up in bed. He said he was scared and wet himself. Could it be possible he could feel the energy, I thought. I comforted him and then said, shhh, it’s just the moon. He calmed down and I changed his clothes, put towels down and he was passed out again.

I need to back up and mention, I’ve been thinking a lot about the theme of what happens when 2 souls who are quantumly entangled meet and realize there is no separation between the 2. I’ve actually found a ton of Rumi quotes that nail the concepts I’m thinking of. Things like this:

In fact, I had recently posted about being blind in my search for the man before time.

I actually believe that the dream world uses fear and pretense to keep us believing this world is real, but if we were courageous enough to fall into the truth of our beings, that he and I are the same and merge, realizing there is no separation between us, this world would die as we wake up from this dream world to find that we are sleeping next to each other. And we will awake, eat our green tea pancakes in our house with the low bed and the stairs that go to an upstairs loft, and tell each other in wonder if the strange dream we both had, realizing in amazement that we had the same dream.

So I have felt a disconnection, but after delving in, I found his heartbeat and I found him, still very warm towards me so I know he is still there.

3. I tried playing with energy again on Saturday (10/26). We were in San Francisco and Adrian was sleeping next to me. I was trying to use my hands again to open up the sky when Adrian woke up and went to the bathroom. I was still halfway in that place and I stood at the door watching him. I felt my hand still on the world, like holding a large wine glass and I said to myself, be careful not to tip it. As I said that, it causes me to tip it ever so slightly and I thought uh oh, just as Adrian suddenly tipped foward and splayed over the toilet. He asked me, how did that happen? It was like I had “tipped” my wine glass which was actually the world and caused the earth to tip, and he looked like he was on a boat that suddenly shifted and he slipped forward, falling.

4. So on Sunday, I decide to try to read my cards. The first time I’d touched the cards in years was when I was looking for the Prince of Disks card, and so I decided to try a reading. Since I don’t know my formats anymore, I spontaneously came up with one–5 cards, first one is where I am now, 2nd is where I’m trying to go, 3rd is what’s helping/hurting me, last 2 are outcome.

I looked to the card numbers for clues and as soon as I started reading them, the pattern appeared. 7-9-5-22 (Gemini Sign, so I read 2 twice), the 7+1 for 8. So 7-9-5-2-2-7-1. I texted my roommate in LA, Brian to confirm–“Was 795-2271 my old phone number?” Yup, he responded.

What the hell?

I take the cards to read that I’m on track. I used to get the Hermit card a lot to represent me. Someone who lives in the shadows, collecting knowledge, studying the universe, but I didn’t trust the world not to try to destroy me if I try to talk about what I know and have seen. I took it to mean I want to come out with this knowledge, that I have to overcome my fears and worries and speak the truth. It looks like I’m on the track I need to be and I will get there.

Last thing is, I was searching my blog for answers and found a story I was working on when I was in Seattle about a missile silo. The way it works is that there are 2 people and in order for missiles to launch they each get a code to authenticate and if they are authenticated they have to put in their codes at the same time to launch. They live in an underground bunker together, just waiting for the signals. In my story, the universe has sent 2 soulmates who are the Doomsday Twins. they don’t know each other and are put in separate places in the world, but when it’s time for the world to end, they will find each other, through signs and signals from the universe, and when they get together and realize they are One, this world is destroyed as they both wake up from this dream.

Is that what this is about? What would happen if I was completely honest with him?

i dreamed of adrian for years. a little 11:11 22 boy (first name 11, last name 11). i remember the moment the portal opened and i caught him, and never let go. he is my heart and my dream come true.

i looked and looked. sometimes i would see a little girl named olive. sometimes i saw adrian growing up alone. adrian goes through periods where he tells me about *little sister* which was always a little creepy. however, she never materialized more than an idea, a whisper.

and then 3 weeks ago i saw her face for the first time. she’s indeed olive.

we can catch the portal tomorrow, however, he was never a man of good timing.

today was an ending but a nice one. it feels like i can finally breathe.

it was a whirlwind september. i guess i’ve been so routine and complacent i forgot to keep an eye on september, and was caught off guard.

the last month has been weird starting with 9/6/2019 a 999 day. sarah emerged asking about paper lanterns. lots of discussions about the moon and meaning.

i would say the thing that hurt the most this month was donating $600 to my teammate when she was in the hospital. i did it so she wouldn’t stress about her fundraising quota. then 2 days later, i forgot my jersey which means the team would have to do a penalty (usually like 20 pushups or running), and she of all people basically said, you better go home and get it because i ain’t running for you.

it really hurt my feelings. but then in hindsight, i realized i shouldn’t have done it. probably all of it, checking up on her, etc. i think sometimes i think i have a responsibility to be kind to people or do things for people, but it’s not necessarily appreciated or maybe even wanted. i think maybe i feel like i need to pay the universe back for all those times i was lost or hurting, and someone helped me, or spent time on me. but i don’t know that i really make a difference, and also i realize it creates imbalances in my life. i think i need to live by this rule:

don’t give to anyone who doesn’t give anything back. doesn’t matter if they can’t or won’t, if you do it will create an imbalance and you will suffer.

the other thing i really need to contemplate is the idea of loyalty. i’m so fucking loyal but sometimes i don’t know to what and why. where did i get this concept from? was it because my upbringing was so traumatic i learned that no matter how fucked up things are, family is family and you stick with them? but i never updated the code to, loyalty to only those who deserve it? i feel like whenever i get on a team, whether work, basketball or socially, i’m all in. i just assume that’s what you do when you’re a crew. but i always end up finding out that not everyone feels the same. in fact i’ve been stabbed in the back (and in the face) several times by my teammates or people i thought were my friends. so if it happens so much, i’m as much to blame because i’m either not setting the right boundaries and expectations in my relationship, or i’m attracting the wrong people (or not kicking out the people who are wrong).

so in that way, this month has been eye opening, heartbreaking at times, but good. to recap:

1. no more giving to anyone who doesn’t give back.
2. take care of myself. stay in my lane. let other people worry for themselves and take care of themselves. the only one i’m responsible for taking care of are my son and me. and the cats.
3. focus on what matters.

something may be true, but doesn’t mean it’s real.
something may be real, but doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.
something may be meaningful, but doesn’t mean it’s yours.
when something is yours and meaningful and real and true

hold on to it.

surprised to be moved to tears. i waited. 2009 i cleared all my shit. i gave myself to the unknown and the deep connections in service of the universe. then in july 2010, i came home. i couldn’t wait. i said i didn’t want anyone else. i waited and i searched. 2010, 2011. up and down the entire left coast. i searched the eyes of everyone. every night, i directly my antennae towards you. 2012 i gave up. i changed from wanting only you, to wanting a man with good timing. and that’s what i got.

and you were right. here. you’d even come to my parents company. twice. you might even have seen pictures of me in the background. just not the time. lifetime after lifetime, until we become cats.

i’m not psychic. i just pay attention.

is there any chance i conflated the blue man and the man with olive skin?

if i reach for the moon and the moon reaches back, my life will be complete.

Pain is resistance. You can reduce pain by reducing resistance to what you can’t change.

this week was a high pressured one. i got the biggest order i’ve ever gotten, and then 2 days later i got another order the same size. what was weird was that one was $2200, and the other was $2022.20. 22’s are repeating themselves.

coach broke down on monday when he got a call in the middle of practice that his mother figure had passed. he called us in a circle and told us then cried. i told the girls to lock arms and we surrounded him. i rubbed his back trying to comfort him. it was heavy.

wed spoke to one of my teammates who had said she was depressed. at the end of the talk she said she felt better. i asked her to promise me that she wouldn’t hurt herself, because hurting herself would be a permanent solution to a temporary problem. she hadn’t mentioned anything along those lines but i felt a worry.

on friday she mentioned she couldn’t go to our fundraiser the next day because she was in the hospital and couldn’t leave til sunday. i knew right away it was a three day mandatory psych hold which means she’d tried to hurt herself. i texted her what happened and she said she almost overdosed on pills. she said she was sorry she didn’t keep her promise to me and it broke my heart. i told her it was okay, that i was glad she was okay. i asked her if there was anything i could do for her and she said no. i asked her if she wanted me to visit her and she said no. i didn’t know what to do. i was looking online and saw that she had posted about the free throw shoot-a-thon asking people to please donate. we each have to raise $600. so i just donated $600 to her so she wouldn’t have to worry about her quota, and wrote in the message that the universe has big plans for her and that i believe in her. i didn’t know what else to do for her. i felt so sorry for all the times i’ve been at the edge, and the pain it put my loved ones through.

sometimes i sit here and wonder what is real and what isn’t. i have notebooks and notebooks of messages i wanted to give people, things that seemed so random that i wanted to tell them, but i didn’t because i was so afraid of rejection or sounding crazy. like right now i feel like i’m supposed to tell someone they need to eat more ginger, but it seems really random, yet every day this thought comes up. what is real? sarah and i are still talking about recurring numbers and paper lanterns. what is real? sometimes my heart or my soul tells me something is real. and when i was younger, i used to think things were real or unreal, like it was black and white. now i realize it can be real and also not real, just at different levels so while something may be real at one level, it is not real on another. like soulmate connections. just because you recognize a soulmate, doesn’t mean they are good for you. just because you recognize a soulmate, doesn’t mean it’s a connection in this lifetime that will last. so what i was asking wasn’t what was *real*, it was, what has meaning.

i asked sarah yesterday, how many people in our lives can we really have deep conversations with? very few. i have so many good people in my life. but in some ways my soul is starving. i want to be able to talk with someone on a deeper level. i want to show my full range of colors, my full size of spirit. i remember years ago, a reader once told me that he felt i had more colors in my emotional spectrum than he had names for. is there someone out there who also has such a range of colors and could understand me? i feel my husband accepts me. but is there someone out there who can understand my full depth? my favorite recurring dreams are when i spoke for hours with the man with the olive skin until i woke up and i would feel as though i spent the whole night up talking.

if i reach for the moon and it turns out to be a paper lantern, it could potentially burn my house down.

i wish i could clone myself. split myself so one half could continue on, in the world in which i’m a pillar. another where i would dedicate my life to making him feel loved and understood. in that world, i hope he feels the same for me.

i would hug you for the rest of your life.

Rosemary’s baby

was born with grey skin

and black, almond eyes

that didn’t blink.

The hospital room fell into a hush as

the nurse laid him in her arms.

She held him to her breast

his skin cool

his tiny heart beating strong.

She named him Abel.

Rosemary’s baby.

He wasn’t right.

His arms grew long.

He never had hair.

His eyes were unnerving.

He still didn’t blink.

At night he would crawl into her bed.

She held his cool wiry body to hers.

He never did learn to speak.

Everything he had to say

he said through his eyes.

Rosemary’s baby, was not of this world.

He had the potential to one day reveal all the earth’s secrets

once he understood how to communicate.

But there was no chance this child would survive.

His difference made the people angry.

what is lonely?

being an old soul is lonely.

you will be called crazy.

being intelligent is lonely.

you will be called stupid.

being kind is lonely.

people infected with anger will make it a sport to destroy your faith in humanity.

being good is lonely.

it may seem many in this world walk within their own dream, acting out old wounds and scripts.

you become a character in their movie, until you wake up and say, that’s not me.

being awake is lonely.

sometimes you see a spark in someone else.

a stirring in their eyes.

a feeling of knowing.

you approach, your heart wide open.

most run away.

the terrified ones call you crazy or stupid.

and you remember, the world is a lonely place.

as you keep searching for signs of life.

and that was after prolonged exposure to the nothingness he felt when left to his own thoughts.

We tend to forget that Saturn is not only about lessons and responsibilities, but great rewards (often material) for work done well.

some things i’m just not allowed to tell people. because they have to come to the same place on their own.

i feel like sarah has a memory of me telling her the meaning behind paper lanterns. but i have forgotten. sometimes i speak from a different place.

i thought about it and i think it has to do with the moon. for those who were lonely growing up and felt drawn to the moon, there was a certain spiritual hug it provided. that somewhere out there, someone was listening. someone saw you. someone loved you. someone cared for you. and maybe you even spoke to it, if not outloud, then in your heart, and even though it could not speak back, you felt someone was there. perceiving.

and i think in life sometimes you think you’ve found it, that person who is the moon and was there for you, all those nights you felt scared, alone, desperate. you think they’re going to hold you the way you need, to envelope the world and make you feel so safe, forever.

and then you reach out, your spirit laughing/crying/dying at your knees and your arms spread so open and you say, remember me, and this moment to you is the absolute proof of magic in this world. and then they turn with their cold blank eyes, with no recognition.

that’s what i meant by paper lanterns. they are very confusing.

but i will admit, it’s hard to tell. because your childheart’s desperate search to hug the moon will never cease.