Beginner's Mind

That's right, I believe in signs. I'm speaking in the written sense, mostly: Whether they're manifested messages from some divine authority or inidicators of universal synchronicity a la Jung or just psychological revelations based on a personal symbology, I enjoy finding coincidental meaning in seemingly mundane events.

In my novel, the narrator spends much of her spiritual journey rambling around the afterlife in a beat-up white Dodge Ram touring van. It's how she begins her journey immediately after death, and while she abandons the van in a fit of independence, it makes its way back into her journey through "coincidence" and becomes the literal vehicle for her descent into a nightmarish "hell" and evetually is the scene of her rape. When she kills her rapist and wanders into a desert alone, she finds the abandoned van broken and stripped, and she leaves it where it is to rot in the desert, so ultimately, it comes to represent her soul.

This morning, when I walked outside my motel to look at the dreary rain here in North Texas, I found a beat-up white Dodge Ram touring van parked in the parking lot. Scrawled with a fingertip on its rear windows was the message, "Hi, Elijah!"

I couldn't have written a more convenient spiritual metaphor, and I'm hoping it serves as a sign that the universe is conspiring in favor of my defense.