Category Archives: Theory
Keeping Dark Secrets
Years ago, I worked for a wonderful woman who was a great boss and a good friend. She had struggled for years to conceive a second child. One day in a staff meeting, she grinned and told everyone the news, she was finally pregnant. As soon as she said it, a wave of complete nausea settled in the pit of my stomach. Dear God, I knew without a doubt she would loose the baby. I was heartbroken for her. Yet, she was laughing and joyful sharing her good news with the group. What could I do? I forced a smile on my face and congratulated her.
Each day watching her anticipate the new life within was torture. My knowing that it would end badly did not help her at all. Even though we were close, I could not tell her. What would be the point? Even if she knew she could not change the outcome. So I hid my sorrow and played along. After a few months of agony the inevitable crisis finally occurred. Over the weekend, she had started to hemorrhage badly and was rushed to the emergency room. Not only did she loose the baby, but she almost bled to death. She had to have emergency surgery to stop the bleeding.
Did I make the wrong choice? Was I supposed to warn her? Even if I had, I don’t think she would have listened. I am convinced telling her would have ended our friendship. This painful experience left me with so many unanswered questions. What is the purpose of knowing the future if it can’t be changed?
I do feel that there is a broad sense of meaning in the universe. But I am not convinced that our individual experiences are micro-managed by a puppet master. To me it feels more like a maze that we are challenged to navigate with the tools we have been given. Back then my future sense only surfaced rarely or maybe I only paid attention when it was dire. So most of the warnings I received years ago were related to death. So rather than welcome the warnings, I felt burdened by a knowledge I did not feel ready to share. All I could do was stay close and spend as much quality time as possible with those who seemed to be at risk. As I look back now, maybe I was missing the point.
As I have learned more about the unexplained, I see so many possibilities. Rather than telling them about the warnings, maybe I should have intervened. Should I have helped them prepare for death in some way? Should I have comforted them and reassured them that death is only a step on our journey? Should I have tried to heal them? As bizarre as that may sound to modern folk, there is research to suggest it is possible, not to mention thousands of years of tradition. But even now years later, with a much stronger sense of the reality of the immaterial world, I still don’t know.
This is the reason I am sharing my stories. I don’t have the answers, but I can’t be the only person struggling with the questions. I would love to hear from the others who are on a similar journey. Maybe together we can find some answers.
Mind over matter
As I walked early this morning on the peaceful tree lined streets of my 1960’s neighborhood, I thought about the difficulty in knowing anything about our reality with certainty. Looking around, I tried to find some anchor that would help me reconcile my paranormal experiences to the everyday physical world.
I look at the rust on a sign pole. I know the steel of the pole to be strong without needing to test it, in spite of the minor decay. I understand the oxidization that creates the rust. It is a regular and predictable process. The rust is is a simple material component of the tangible world. A mundane counterpoint to my esoteric thoughts, with no real bearing on my life or my musings. Or is it?
Are the literal nuts and bolts of this sign the only basis of reality, or is the material world an illusion? Does the rust really exist or only my perception of it? If my reality is determined by my perceptions or observations, why would I bother to perceive the rust when I would prefer a more uniform finish? What meaning or purpose could this little patch of decay have for me, a living and presumably conscious being?
Letting this muddle stew a while in the back of my mind, I decided to learn a little more about the rust that so rudely defaces this once proud symbol of civilization and progress. I needed to brush up since my last science class was a few decades ago.
- Iron is a relatively abundant element in the universe. The sun and many types of stars contain iron in quantity.
- The Earth’s molten core is thought to be composed mainly of iron. This core is believed to be the source of Earth’s magnetic field, which protects our atmosphere from radiation that would destroy it, and incidentally us.
- The red of Mars is ferric oxide, showing that the atmosphere once contained oxygen, the oxygen that is only liberated by life.
- The iron group are the only metals that fall from the sky. Iron is found native in about 6% of meteorites.
- Iron is a shiny, bright white metal that is soft, malleable, ductile and strong.
- Iron is the most abundant metal on Earth, but in its pure form rapidly decays. It is only found naturally in it’s metallic form in meteors. So how did the first iron metals come to be smelted by humans?
- Like other metals, iron forms a crystalline ionic compound when bound by ‘resonance’ to carbon. The resulting forms can have special electrical properties when molten or dissolved in solution.
- There are multiple forms of iron. One form is magnetic, but when iron is transformed into another form, the magnetism disappears, although the lattice remains unchanged.
- Iron is vital to plant and animal life. In humans, it appears in the hemoglobin molecule in our blood.
- Ferrous sulphide can form crystalline FeS2, known as the mineral pyrite. Pyrite can be struck with iron to produce sparks for making fire.
- The ferrous ion is greenish in solution, while the ferric ion is a light violet. The distinct colors of iron compounds are due to the d-electrons, which can interact with light in many interesting ways. Various ferrous compounds have been used to color dies, paint, inks and glass.
- The ability to smelt and work iron into usable forms was instrumental in the development of human civilization.
- Iron is also found in minerals such as magnetite, which is commonly seen as black sands along beaches and stream banks. A layer of magnetite can be an indicator of the presence of gold dust.
- For manufacturing the versatility of iron-carbon alloys, such as steel, cannot be matched in any other material.
- Iron can be induced to provide a strong magnetic field with only small excitation by an electric current.
- Potassium ferrous ferricyanide is Prussian blue, which can be used as a medicine to counter some forms of radiation poison.
- The magnetism of the iron group of metals is a rare and remarkable property. It is not due to any inherent magnetic propensities of the atoms, but to the structure of the metal.
- The six ton Iron Ashoka Pillar of Delhi is about 1600 years old, 98% pure iron and has not corroded. This artifact is believe to demonstrate the technological sophistication of past civilizations.
For more fascinating info on iron see http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/iron.htm.
Upon reflection, the rust I pass every day and take for granted is in fact a demonstration of the unmatched power of elemental iron to shape and reshape our body chemistry, our technology, our art, our civilization, our planet, our atmosphere, our stars and our future. The power of this element comes not from its stability, but from its instability and its readiness to react with carbon and oxygen which are literally the core components of life. True alchemy is not to turn lead into gold, but to turn star dust into life and clearly iron is the catalyst that enables that to happen.
My new respect for rust causes me to reflect on the illusion that material reality is fixed and static. It only appears so due to the limited range of our basic senses, infrequent insight and short lifespans. A never ending flow of wave-particles, fields and forces compose everything around us. They just happen to produce an artifact that we call the material world. All of the things around us are constantly changing, while we exert our greatest effort to bend even a tiny portion of matter to our will.
Clearly the universe felt I needed a lesson in humility today. Point taken.
Entangled Myth
I recently read the book Entangled Minds by Dean Radin. I have read a number of other books that also review the large body of rigorous, repeatable lab studies that have demonstrated a measurable effect of PSI interaction over the last hundred years. What most impressed me about Dean Radin is that he goes beyond the now thoroughly established, if not well publicized, conclusion that PSI is real. Radin’s multi-disciplinary background as well as personal experience may have given him a bit more insight to begin proposing a mechanism behind the magic.
Basic physical concepts like time, space, energy, and matter were imagined to be fixed, absolute, and fundamentally different substances. It was taken for granted that reality existed in an absolute sense, independent of observers, and it was an additional token of faith that action at a distance was impossible. The concept of mind, then viewed through the fledgling discipline of psychology , and especially its rising fad of behaviorism, was regarded as an illusion created by the clockwork mechanisms of the brain. Because mind was an illusion and action at a distance was impossible, genuine psi phenomena were also impossible.
Radin, Dean (2009-11-19). Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality (pp. 241-242). Pocket Books. Kindle Edition.
Our cultural framework is still heavily embedded in a mechanistic world/cosmological view. Even practitioners of other scientific disciplines seem to have little awareness of the potential upheaval that could result from the application of the principles of quantum entanglement to the molecular scale. The social sciences, which include my own academic background, are even further out of touch with the frontiers of the physical, chemical and biological sciences. The foundation needed to understand and apply a new understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and energy rarely exists outside of the practitioners’ discipline.While the public is still unaware of the successful research of PSI events, surveys show that most people do accept the reality of PSI. The remaining mystery is how it might work based on our current scientific knowledge. Radin begins to tie the emerging understanding of entangled particles and quantum physics with the patterns of PSI events. Unfortunately, the public is generally unaware of role of the observer in establishing reality and the measurement of quantum particles’ ‘spooky action at a distance’ as famously labeled by Einstein. So tying one mis-understood event to another probably does not go far to break the stalemate that keeps PSI research on the fringe of science and society.
Psychologists still practice as if the brain and the mind were the same thing. Yet, there are documented cases where the mind is operating without the brain functioning. Any out of place thought is a delusion, rather than a stray idea from a passer by.
Bio-chemists and medical researchers are still focusing on the role of specific disease agents and chemical compounds in restoring health. Yet, their population based research has only partial predictive value in managing illness. The role of the mind in establishing and maintaining health is rarely acknowledge, other than as a placebo effect.
It seems we are stuck at the beginning of a scientific revolution, not because the research is unavailable or inconclusive, but because the general academic community and the public can’t absorb the results. The scope of cosmological and theoretical physics have moved so far out of alignment with the general world view that they have become akin to magical arcane practitioners of dark arts.
Messengers or monsters
What other beings exist among us? The Judeo-Christian tradition tells of many kinds of supernatural beings. Angels are God’s messengers and the demons are the fallen angels trying to lead humans to destruction. A literal reading of the Bible and other ancient texts identify many types of entities all in a massive power struggle. All traditions I am aware of also have similar stories of struggle, deception, corruption and redemption. Even our modern forms of entertainment paint the monsters’ portraits and tap our deepest fears. Somewhere inside us is a core that knows without seeing that something dark is out there. We try to reduce that fear with rationality, science and a materialist paradigm that tells us we are alone. But we are not alone.
When one sense is lost, the others become stronger. We have come to rely on sight, sound, touch, taste and smell as if they were the only senses. So we comfort our fears by turning on the lights and closing the doors, as if that would ever be enough to stop the monsters. Our ancestors left us warnings and tried to prepare us to face the unknown. Somehow, through the generations, we suppressed the abilities to sense and communicate with the other side and with each other. By denying the reality of unseen and powerful forces, we cut ourselves off from our own strengths as well.
Long ago, all members of a community believed in good and evil with powerful forces at work in our lives. That common belief gave the group unity and strength, but may have opened the door for both good and evil. Now that few believe and try to deny the other senses, we declare the world of our five senses to be all that exists. This new form of faith has closed many doors. But the darkness has not vanished. The struggles we face are inside. That is where the others still wait for us.
Do they have tooth and claw, with hideous faces and terrifying howls? Do they plot evil with twisted games and crimes of greed? Do they sneak up on us in the night and suck our blood? No, because those simple actions are all comprehensible to us and are only how we have tried to metaphorically understand elemental forces. Those forces are already here, inside us and everyone around us. By unleashing our own inner venom, greed, rage and hate, we continue to feed uncontrolled manifestations that can reach into our reality. I don’t know if there are other races of evil intent trying to break into our reality or if the essence of corrupted human souls continue to seek our destruction, even after death.
I suspect that our animating force or consciousness manifests many different ways in many different realities. After all, if we can reincarnate as humans or animals, as I know from experience we can, then why not as aliens or demons or any other entity? Perhaps our own inner creative forces actualize the entities that do reach us. Physics leaves open the possibility of many realities, with the role of observer as the defining force of creation. The others we vaguely sense may be our inadvertent creation as our fears are made stronger by denial and isolation. The doors inside that we lock in fear are also starving our souls of the meaning, connection, magic and mystery that we need to grow together.
The cosmic struggle that we are locked in is really a war of unity vs. discord. We are on a path of collective evolution into ever more integrated living systems. Yet, our material universe is in a state of explosive decay. Perhaps our consciousness is immortal but divided and immature, needing cycles of incarnation to grow and develop. I see us now like bacteria that must bind together to form a colony to survive the changing environment. Living beings have the potential to form webs of cooperation, caring and creativity. We need to fully develop both as individuals and as communities to reach the next level of development and evolution. There is an ultimate conflict ahead when our collective consciousness will either find a way to transcend or transform the material plane, or the cycle of life will finally draw to a close.
Downside Up
Last night I dreamed that I was traveling with friends on a train over a long distance. As we traveled, we would occasionally pass through a tunnel that would immerse us in total darkness. As we emerged into the light again, each time I noticed something else that was just a little bit different. One tunnel would change a companions hair, the next another’s pants, as it went on the results progressed in intensity. Eventually a whole person was replaced. I seemed to be the only one who noticed.
Then I shifted and I was a mother who had lost a child during one of the tunnels. I looked every where for my missing child. But as I asked, each person seemed more and more confused as they had not seen a child with me. Finally, I stopped asking and began to realize why. Although it felt as if all of these changes were happening in front of me. I eventually realized that the people around me are not changing places, instead I was the one who was sliding from one reality to the next.
Locks and keys
The quest to understand my ‘future sense’ continues, but as I look to scientific experts for answers I find the promise of enlightenment keeps fading the deeper I dig. Struggling to learn about physics, cosmology and neurology, I begin to feel that despite all we have learned, we still have the blind leading the blind. As I keep digging, I find leaders in these fields looking for the same kinds of answers. But the questions are too small to open the doors needed to find what we are looking for.
My questions may take me into a wild frontier, but I am willing to consider the possibilities and share my thoughts.
Does precognition require that the future be fixed and unchangeable? No, I get plenty of warnings ‘in time’ that allow me to avoid the implied consequences. Yes, some who prefer a set future, will argue pre-determination and say that I was destined to avoid those. Unfortunately, I also miss some, which has helped me learn the ‘rules’. I now often ignore the warnings that are minor. At first I ignored them because they seemed too silly to bother with. Now, I am usually able to tell that they are real. By going on alert and watching for the consequence without taking evasive action, I try too polish my ability to ‘interpret’ the warning by matching it up to the results. Some events do seem to be much harder to avoid, so that even with the warning and the evasion, I still manage to end up with the consequences. Perhaps they are mitigated in some way, but some events seem more fixed than others.
If the future is malleable, then are there all probabilities in play at all times? No, my ongoing daily experience suggests that there is a flow and momentum toward and around a few set events. I think of it as being in a small boat on a lazy river. If I watch the way the water moves ahead of me, I can infer the location of hidden boulders that could damage the boat. I can’t tell the exact nature of the obstacles, but I can feel a disturbance in the flow. I can try to avoid the obstacles, but sometimes the current is stronger and I hit them anyway. At times, rarely, it seems that even extraordinary effort can’t avoid the event. Then there are the points int he river where another river joins and pushes me along faster and in a new direction. The most rare future warnings come on slowly and build up a tremendous internal pressure in a particular life event direction. These life pivot points are so powerful that even if I resist and go the other way, many circumstances will arise that make resisting the ‘planned’ direction more and more difficult and miserable. Eventually, I have to give in to the life change direction that I apparently should go in just to avoid the cascading negative consequences of resisting.
So now I am thinking of my ‘future sense’ less as ‘sight’ and more like ‘sonar’. If you have ever tried to figure out exactly what a fishing scanner has found in the water beneath your boat, you will understand what I mean. It gives you some idea of distance and scale, but no details. My experience suggests that there is an echo from future events to now. It is almost as if the emotional impact of the event in it’s own ‘when’ then kicks back an echo into it’s past. It then works a little like a reverse memory. Just as seeing a item may remind you of one you saw before, encountering a circumstance that ties to a future event triggers a minor reverberation – future emotions bouncing off of now and creating a noticeable disturbance in the flow of thought. Since the echo of the future seems to be more of an emotional event and not a rational/analytical thought process, perhaps the ‘future sense’ is really a consequence of quantum forces at play in the function of the sub-conscious and emotion. Could the fact that my physical self is present in both the past that encountered the echo and the future which experienced the event/emotion be the link? Would the same molecules from two points in ‘time’ have a form of quantum entanglement just as two parts of the same whole separated by space?
Is time an illusion? In some ways yes, the idea of a rigid linear progression is an illusion, which I believe is created by our brains trying to make sense of too much input. So in the practical sense that most people do experience time in a similar linear way, it is functionally real. There is decay and entropy, which tends toward disorder. We measure the cycle of orbits and half-life of decay to establish conventional units of measure for communication and coordination. At the macro scale these conventions of measuring progression serve a very useful purpose, to allow us to coordinate activities as a society. But when we drill down into the underlying forces at work, the illusion starts to slip. When I speak into a phone and when I am heard are not exactly simultaneous. An orbital cycle is not exactly identical every trip around the star. Half-life decay can be partially reset by cosmic events. Anything I perceive with my senses glosses over tremendous detail and variation. My mind attempts to apply order to match each experience to a pattern and find an appropriate way of dealing with the situation, even to the point of overriding the sensory input if it does not fit. So, I remain unimpressed with any definition of reality that presumes that human observation and measurement are inherently concrete and substantial.
In the shadows
Most people seem to accept the idea of a supernatural/paranormal level to existence, even if they do not claim to know exactly what that is. Although I have had some contact with the unseen for most of my life, I have never felt sure of what is out there than I somehow catch echos of. My experience tells me that most religious traditions have codified an allegorical reference to someone’s long ago authentic experience. But the narratives have been so distorted that ‘truth’ is not clear. How can we peel back the layers and find the substance?
As I let the many traditions and modern theories swirl in my overloaded brain, I cannot escape the impression that all paths are ways to approach the same thing. If there is truly one core metaphysical reality that somehow interacts with our own, what would it be. If we sift all of the common elements together and then stop back, what kind of picture emerges? So many have proposed unifying ideas of the other, but so far I have not felt that ‘snap’ that indicates a solid lock. To me so many traditions seem to have a gilded facade that may hide a darker truth. What unpalatable reality may be underneath the stories of faith and redemption?
So far, these attributes seem to fit the essence of the many traditions:
– There is a form of consciousness that exists outside of our daily sensory realm.
– There is an inherent connection between that entity and ourselves.
– I suspect some kind of symbiotic interchange exists between us and has for most of our existence as a species.
– Conversely, there seems to be some faction of the entity that is parasitic and hostile.
– They do not inhabit the same sensory realm as we do.
– They seem to need something intangible but essential from us.
– They seem to be capable of manipulating our perceptions.
– They are shadows in our world and we are shadows in theirs.
Possible interpretations:
– We are pawns in some other entities long term internal power struggle.
– We provide something intangible they need or want, so they manipulate our perceptions to elicit certain reactions.
– We may be a form of livestock to them to be maintained and drained as needed, as aphids are to ants and as cows are to us.
– We are not supposed to know what is really going on, we are fed lies and illusions to pacify us.
– We are somehow related or connected, yet not eqipped to directly interact without an extreme effort or altered state.
Critical questions:
– Some of their reality does spill over into ours, but how much is real and how much is illusion? Is the distortion intended or accidental?
– Where they somehow responsible for our existence, as so many traditions refer to a creator?
– Are they a remnant or a vanguard?
Glitch in the matrix
A few days ago, late in the evening, I walked into my living room which has a high a peaked ceiling. Just as I stepped into the room, I glanced up at the peak windows and the night reflected a swirl of black above me. My mind immediately dismissed it as shadows from a ceiling fan. Then my conscious thoughts caught up and realized that this house, which I have lived in only two years, does not have ceiling fans. I looked up again and the black swirl was no longer there. So I began to convince myself it had been an odd shadow or my eyes reacting to the change in light. Well enough.
Until I turned and saw it again in a different corner of the room. It was a set of spiral bands of black pivoting around a central point. But the arms were not straight, they were twisted as if distorted by the rotational movement. Once again, I tried to dismiss it in my thoughts, but I had no explanation. Then I realized what made the sight so odd at first. The first time I saw it, I saw it as a reflection in the glass, which would place it above my head. The reflection was not complete, as the source overlapped the edge of the glass, so I only saw about two thirds of the swirl. The second time I saw it in a specific location in the opposite corner of the room, away from me and I could see all of it. If it was an illusion or my eyes playing tricks, why would there be a reflection of a partial image in the glass, rather than the whole imaginary image?
Just Another Day
At a doctor’s appointment this morning in a new office, I waited for a nurse to call me back. Three different nurses arrived one by one, looked at their papers and called a name. I ignored them and waited. Another nurse emerged and I started to stand up. I caught myself and sat back down so that I would not draw attention. She scanned the papers and called my name. I stood and followed her to the exam room.
Later as I went to pick up one of my kids from a lesson, I walked in the door about 3 minutes late and knew immediately that my child was not in the building. Yet, I did not feel any sense of danger. I walked through looking and asking the leaders. Everyone had seen my son leave by the front door a few minutes before and no one had seen him since. Becoming frantic, I went back out and looked all up and down the front walkway. No sign of him. Yet, I felt strongly that he was nearby, but it made no sense. Why would he hide? Where could he hide,? I could see a long way in both directions. Not to mention it was a cold night and his jacket and shoes were inside. I had the strongest need to step outside and call for him, even though it seems impossible that he would be near. So, I called him and up he popped from a small corner near the stairs where he had decided to hide. After the required lecture and hugs, I asked why he had gone there. He wanted to wait where he could see me drive up, but I had driven in the back way.
A busy house often results in a dirty carpet, so I have a small steam cleaner for small messes. I cleaned up yet another routine mess and then started to put the equipment away as I usually do. But in this case, I had the strong thought that I would need it again very soon. So, I did not bother to wrap the cord and put it in the closet. I then gathered my drink and stuff to go join the kids.
This evening, playing with the kids, I started to set my glass of wine down on the carpet. I immediately got the “uh-oh” feeling. Sighing, I picked up the glass and moved it to an out of the way spot between a big toy and a door. Once again, I argued with the feeling that it could not possibly tip over back there. A few minutes later I moved across the room to pick up the ball we were playing with. As I turned, I saw it. My youngest holding the empty glass and saying, “Empty”. Yep, time to go get the steam cleaner.
The situations today were very clear and easy to spot. I usually get at least one a day. But for every strong feeling that is so clearly on target, there are a handful of near misses. I used to just ignore the near misses. But as I have become a little more clear on spotting the warnings, I can sometimes feel a faint shadow of what might have happened. Usually those are the ones where I would have smacked my shin or hurt myself in some other clumsy way. I can almost feel the pain I narrowly avoided. I realized that some will simply call that imagination. But I am clear on the difference. Not only is the echo more concrete than imagination, but I don’t experience the same faint almost pain when I avoid a normal obvious visual hazard. Still to anyone who has not dealt with it personally, it would be impossible to prove that I had prevented an accident. It seems to me, that the better I get at listening to the warnings and correctly adjusting my actions, the less I can demonstrate the validity of my extra sense.
The result of this constant double checking of every feeling and impulse is mentally exhausting. I would love to be able to just rest my brain and not have to think about the what ifs and extra layers. But I am terrified that if I drop my guard for one minute and stop paying attention, I will miss the critical warning that would save my kids. No matter how drained and stressed I am from all of this mental effort, I will do my best to stay on guard.
Hindsight and regret
I think it was winter 2001, I was living in the northern suburbs of Chicago. My apartment complex had a long winding drive that passed a few small ornamental duck ponds that sat in between the buildings. At one point, the road curved around the edge of a pond with only about six feet or so between them. There was an iron fence separating the pond from the road.
One evening after an exhausting day at work, I was driving through my complex past one of the duck ponds and the road was covered in snow. All I could think about was getting home and warming up. Then out of nowhere, an instant strong thought overwhelmed my mind – with so much snow on the road, a car could go straight through the middle of the iron fence and be submerged in the adjacent pond. This thought was not an image or words, but a concrete finished conclusion – more like replaying a memory than a what-if speculation or daydream.
As soon as I thought it, I immediately discounted it as not realistic. This drive had curves, snow and speed bumps. No one goes fast enough on it to have a big accident like that. Although a car could certainly drift or slide off the road, I could not see how it would make it all the way into the pond from that spot. It would have to do a very strange maneuver to go from the outer edge of the curve – which at that point is headed away from the pond – then make a 90 degree turn and hit the fence straight on. That path would be exactly perpendicular from the direction it had been traveling. Based on my limited experience, that was not how cars skidded in snow. Besides, the plowed snow created little berms on each side of the road, which would probably slow down or stop a car. Then I thought that the iron fence would further slow down or stop any car that had managed to drift that far. The whole idea of such a dramatic accident in such an awkward spot seemed ridiculous and I told myself firmly that it just could not happen.
Assuming that my very tired brain had simply cooked up some silliness to make me pay attention to my driving, I was extra careful going the few hundred more yards to my place. After some rest, the next day I headed back out to work. There was still lots of snow, but everything was normal in the complex and I did not think any more about the strange thoughts from the previous night.
Another long day and another drive home, took me back to the apartment drive about the same time of day and with the same snowy conditions. As I carefully made my way along, I could see something was a little different up ahead. There was something yellow flapping in the wind on the fence, but I could not see it clearly from the angle I was travelling. Then as I rounded that last curve and looked to my right, my heart stopped and I started shaking all over.
There were two tire tracks in the snow leaving the road from the furthest out part of the curve. They were exactly perpendicular to the direction of travel. They continued right up to the fence, or what was left of it. Now there was a car sized portion of the fence missing. The tire tracks continued past the fence, through the frozen crust and into the pond. There was a car sized hole in the icy surface. The yellow flapping in the wind had been the police tape warning people away from the scene.
My teeth chattered, my mind stopped completely and I felt devastated. Why? What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know any of my neighbors. I had no way to know which of them I could have warned. I had not even believed the warning, so why would they have listened if I had spoken up. Yet, no matter how I tried to rationalized it, I felt responsible. I felt like I failed and that the consequences were my fault.
I could not handle it. I did not know what to do, so I did nothing. I did not tell anyone. I did not watch the news. I did not read the paper. I completely avoided learning the fate of the person who ended up in that frozen pond. To this day, I do not know the end of the story.
But, I have learned my lesson. Now I do pay attention. I no longer dismiss the odd thoughts that intrude on my days. I try very hard to catch even the small warnings that pop up multiple times a day. I just hope that the next time I get a life or death message, I will know what to do. I can’t imagine anything worse that knowing something awful will happen to my loved ones and not being able to stop it.
Visionary Explorer 