I Fear My Hardened Heart Is Blocking Your Cosmic Voice

Do Not Fear: Chapter 3

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Conversations with Strangers

Once we embrace spontaneity, novelty follows. Routines bind us, whereas doing one unique thing each day frees us to receive discovery. Don’t rush home after work every day. Live life, and life will find you. Whatever “life” is. I’ve done what the notes on my whiteboard told me. These words were given to me by the books on the shelves that wrung my collar whenever I brushed through their halls. I read their faces, peered into their minds, and received the encrypted wisdom from the nameless messenger. I’ve kept its messages safe on my whiteboard. Each passage relayed to me that repetition kills us slowly inside. 

One day after work, I listened and acted. Instead of racing back to the desk in my room, I drove over to one of the coastal pubs in town. On the beachside patio, I stared into the sun, which set on the horizon. In the hues of orange smooching and caressing the indigo-blue water, I watched the light that reflected from their embrace and shined into my eyes. I sat there with my notebook, waiting for my next assignment. But no words filled my head. I was disappointed. I placed myself in such a way to receive my next message. I did what was asked of me. Nothing happened. No words were spoken. Until I heard, in a Hungarian accent, a woman say, “ Excuse me. May I sit here?” 

I looked up from my notebook. Rested atop her wrinkled cheeks, were two eyes, lit like candles. Her face glowed in the setting light. She wore a thick, knitted sweater shawl, draped over her body like a blanket carried on her shoulders along with the smile of a twelve-year-old girl. 

I welcomed her to sit at the end of my table. She introduced herself as Ava. Ava took my kindness as an invitation to talk about her life story. I listened, but my eyes were magnetized to the blank page in front of me. Then she admitted to having cancer, and that her doctors had told her she only had six months to live… three years ago. She’d lived life with laughter and legerity ever since. That shook my eyes loose from my notebook. She gained my attention, and I indulged in her anecdotes. 

Before she left, she finished her beer. She chugged a half-pint. Standing up from the table, she said her goodbyes and a hiccup pole vaulted from her chest. Immediately she giggled. 

“What’s so funny?” I asked. 

“Whenever you hiccup, it means a loved one is thinking about you,” she responded. 

“So who’s thinking about you?” 

“Well, my husband passed some years ago.” She paused. “I like to think it’s him.” 

…

The Sandman Retired Last Night

I finished packing my travel bag into the trunk of my car. Beneath all my belongings, my whiteboard peeked at me and said, “Embrace spontaneity.” I nodded, and then I closed my trunk shut. 

I convinced Ahren and Ana to leave early. This time, our gross motel room gave me an advantage. But it probably had more to do with Ahren pleasing Ana’s desire to spend the day in Nashville. 

I hadn’t slept last night—not until the last hour anyway. The group of men and that lady partied till dawn. Only once I was sure they wouldn’t break my car window, I crawled on top of my sloped mattress. As soon as I had shut my eyes, the sirens alarmed me, and it was time to leave.

We launched from Memphis and were bound for Nashville. I drove off ahead of Ahren and Ana as usual. When I want to be somewhere I get there. 

I shuffled through the radio stations in my car again. Not only were my eyelids heavy, but even my body sagged into my car seat. I wanted to sink into the faux leather upholstery, like a squeaky cloud upon which to regain what I had lost. But there was no time to rest. 

The trees changed since yesterday. They were different here. As I drove deeper into Tenessee, the tips of the trees were painted in several colors across the spectrum, as though they were the edge of a prism, projecting the rainbow in an array mélangé.

Nashville was only an hour away. I flipped through the stations, and a thought pervaded my mind, swimming in circles. I felt transient. Is this how people end up on the streets? They leave everything behind, and spend all their money on a one-way trip to a city, where they have no prospects of — 

— For He is our God. And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts and become spiritually dull… — 

I couldn’t shake the sleep off my eyes anymore. Ahren and Ana were likely an hour behind me, so I pulled over at the next rest stop. I drove into a long entrance that dipped into a quasi-ravine, which hosted a large clearance from the surrounding forest. The park must’ve been a mile or two in diameter. There were three levels of parking lots that stretched for maybe thirty spaces per level. One sat above the other. The semi-trucks were designated at the top level. Behind the semi-trucks atop the hill, I spotted a recreation room. There, I bought some coffee and snacks from the vending machines and returned to my car.

I timed myself to sleep for ten minutes short of an hour. I couldn’t rest comfortably since all my belongings were pressed against the back of my chair. Sitting straight, I bent to the side and laid my head on a pillow that I had kept on the floor of the passenger seat. I pulled my hoodie over my head to cover the sun and shut my eyes.

Time stopped for a bit. All noises around me were amplified. The inside of my car was a silent cavern, but the kids playing football outside echoed against its walls louder and louder,… and my breath… drew… softer… and longer...

I Hear You Loud and Clear

Suddenly, I awoke to the sight of stacked books, sitting on some steps above me to the left. I tried to read the words on their spines. Only one word was clear: Ashkenazi. What does that mean? This word was all I could see. When I flexed my neck to the right or left, nothing happened. I wasn’t in control of my body. I wanted to read more of the words, but my vision was restricted also. By what? 

Then, a voice spoke at a frequency far too low for my ears to translate. The words weren’t in a tongue that I knew, yet their sensation filled me with peace. The voice, inhuman, sounded as though an orchestra of a thousand cellos bowed in rounds, cascading one after another. However, the intensity of the bass was weightless, and they sang serpentine melodies as swift as flutes at magnitudes of quaking earth. It was altogether foreign, altogether familiar. I couldn’t comprehend words, but I understood the message. He said: 

Those who diligently seek me, will find me. 

I could not look up. The light shined too bright. But it wasn’t the light that prevented me. Guilt shrouded my conscience in shadow, which weighed down my head at the force of plunging off a cliff. I fell to my knees, with my eyes tethered to the ground beneath me. I couldn’t face this thing with the pain of embarrassment that coursed through me. All the hairs on my skin hid in shame. Spared thoughts surfaced in my consciousness, and I realized what was happening. And I shook in anguish. In bitter sarcasm, I acknowledged what I could not control and said, “Alright. Do you want me to give my life to you?” In a mocking gesture, I raised both hands to my head. Before I brought them back down, I felt a grip around my wrists, which were now being lifted high over my head. At once, my indignance fled and was disintegrated from the light, which now covered my body. The white light cast no shadows beneath me; they vanished. I cried, released from the bondage that I hadn’t known existed until this moment. I was not worthy. I heard myself cry this over and over. His touch erased the pride that bound me. Tears streamed down my face. And then I — 

“Son!”

Awakening.

I woke up to someone knocking on my window. A state trooper stood outside my car window. The sun disappeared, and the street lamp overhead replaced it.

“Son, roll down your window.”

I obeyed.

“Yes, officer?” I asked.

“Son, I don’t know what you folks in California think is normal, but we here in Tenessee don’t put up with homeless people nodding off in their cars. Your license and registration.”

I gave him my license and explained to him what had happened the previous night, and how I only slept an hour last night if that. I don’t like drugs, but I enjoy beers like anyone else. He seemed amused by my last statement. 

“Look, kid,” he said, “do me a favor and be on your way. I’ll let you off without a fine this time, but don’t let me catch you snoozing in this park again. We like things kept tidy around here. You hear?”

“Yes, sir,” I said astutely. “Thank you for your mercy.”

“Whatever,” he sighed from his nostrils. He walked back to his car and said, “You’re in His hands now.”

“What did you say?” But he had already slammed his car door shut and sat behind me, waiting for me to get. 

I started the car engine. Letting out a deep exhale, I exited the rest stop and journeyed back on the I-40 East.

I checked my phone: Several missed calls and several voicemails from Ahren. I threw my phone in the passenger seat. He can wait.

I approached a billboard in the distance and leaned over to read it. I hoped I was close to Nashville. I’ll stay the night there and take off for Raleigh in the morning.

I slowed down my car to read the sign. When I gazed up from underneath it, everything within me dropped through the floorboard of my Volvo, tumbled onto the road behind me, and joined the rest of the road kill:

He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him…

Psalms 91:15