OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS (a story of signs)

He stood in line at the bank, his own private reality running spitting and sputtering through his head. He could see the people around him going about their own day, with their own shadows, mouths moving, but he heard only his own thoughts:

store that

sort this out

save more

eat less

no more yelling

take more vitamins

make better decisions

feel sorrow, but not regret

find wonder

get a fucking hobby

become a "real boy"



When he suddenly overheard the tailend of the conversation going on between two women in front of him,

"Stop at 11:11" She said to the other.

He did not wait for her response and went back into the crevises of his own perception, drowning out the words going on around him.



All would have seemed normal, except for the strange, reacurring paradox of everytime he came to, from his thoughts, he overheard the same constant phrase,

Stop at 11:11

and what an odd thing to hear. Each public place he was, first the bank, the laundry mat, the grocers--like little ghosts inside his head and he was beginning to wonder, not only why but what exactly it meant.





stop at 11:11





He drifted back into his random thoughts;

breathe oxygen

another day another dolllar

rat race

lost and alone

urgent

stop at 11:11 (he overheard)

pay up

karma

immense and immersed

panicked

pointless

the eye of god

the hum of the earth

very very dizzy

spiders in the closet

stop at 11:11 (there it was again)

snakes and ladders

devil at the door

watch for signs

meaningful living

the sigh of angels

floating feathers



The day sped by and the future was now the present. The mystery of the night surrounded him. Moths looked for light. He was paying attention to the smells of the dark, the sounds of humming street lamps.
He walked past a stranger.
"Got the time?" Stranger asked.
He looked at his watch,
"11:10." He replied and his heart sank with an eerie electrical feeling. He stopped. The minute passed, it was now 11:11. He stood very still at the curb of the intersection, motionless, wondering what strange events would unfold around him. There are no coincidenses, he realized and the overheard conversations were a sign, he could now feel it.
He waited.
11:12.
11:13.
11:14.
cars passed in their normal way.
11:15.
no sirens or freak flashes of lightening.
11:16.
nothing.
11:17.
nothing had happend.
He laughed out loud at himself, waited for the light to change, then crossed the street. He walked the rest of the uneventful way back home.

(he walked the rest of the way home, without the knowledge that he had course corrected the universe. He will never know exactly what would have happend if he would not have stopped, if he would have ignored the signs and taken just a few more steps into the future.
He is completley unaware.
He will never know.
and neither will we.)

What signs will you pay attention to today?
(maybe this is one of them)

c.morning 2008