Two Feathers

Prelude

Your fortune lives in a cookie.
Where is the transcendence in that?
Can it be found?
Does it exist?
Or is it just a good cup of coffee?

I walk the zombie walk, face down while looking for those green-eyed angels hiding in the flotsam and jetsam left behind by the down-and-outers along 17th street. I may be down, but don’t count me out. Not yet.

Everything is vibrating. Look at me, look at me! So I look, and if I like what I see, I pick it up and carry it home. These are my treasures. This is my zombie life.

Earth’s rivers, left to themselves, flow unfailingly to the sea, or so I’ve been told. People, I’ve been told, have a river that runs through their souls but sometimes the human stream gets blocked or diverted. Shit happens. Time grows short. Leaves fall. Winter approaches. Specters lie in wait.

Some say that this be justice. That may be so, but Dante, that great teacher, says that justice is failed love. I believe that is so. I believe that is why I am here, shuffling along 17th Street searching for redemption.

Postlude

In desperation, I turn to the ancient tradition of angels.
Janice, which translates from the Hebrew as Gift from God,
is my guardian angel.
It matters not what I’ve done, she loves me unconditionally.
Every day she guides me, instructs me, and loves me.
Yesterday, while walking on 17th street,
I asked Janice to give me a feather as a sign I wasn’t out of my mind.
I came home with two feathers.
Why two, I wondered.
The next day I started reading chapter 5 in Lorna Byrne’s book,
Angels At My Fingertips.
At the top of the page were two feathers.
I’d never noticed them in chapters 1–4,
but they are there at the start of every chapter in the book.
Transcendence can be found most anywhere if you look hard enough,
so keep looking.