Dale types text to overlay the photo: You are about to receive ten thousand dollars! Type yes if you believe! He clicks save, names it, using a naming format he’s adopted to keep track of his thousands of affirmations, then pulls up the next photo, a generic sunrise. He switches screens to his running list of affirmations. Closing his eyes, he calls upon his intuition to make his gaze alight on the right phrase. He looks at the screen. His eyes land on All that you have experienced was only preparation for this moment. Type yes if you believe! He repeats it in his mind three times to give it intent, then switches screens to the meme-making app and types in the text to overlay an image, saves it, names it.
Dale posts the affirmations on Instagram and Twitter. Timing is everything. With half the world’s population engaging in social media an average of 2.5 hours per day, the odds of reaching just the right person at just the right time might seem low, but not if you factor in the divine algorithm that organizes everything. The Internet, Dale thinks, is an avatar of Universal Mind, the elephant-headed Ganesh manifesting through microchips.
Dale feels guided to do one about love. He checks his running list, but nothing feels right. He turns to the hole in his own heart that yearns for a twin flame to burn beside him and waits for angels to put the words together. He feels it coming and begins typing before he even knows what the words will be. You will meet your twin flame today. Love is coming to you. Type yes if you believe! He finds a stock image of two lovers holding hands, but instead of overlaying these words on that image, he decides to keep this affirmation for himself.
Dale intuits he’s posted enough for now. As if on cue – isn’t everything? – the ring-tone on his phone sounds, a Zen meditation gong struck to signal it’s time to rise from the cushion. But when Dale looks at the caller’s number, he takes a deep breath, mentally crosses himself, and swipes.
“Hi Mom.”
“I’m just calling because you haven’t called me. I wanted to make sure you were still alive.”
“We spoke a few days ago, Mom.”
“How’s work?”
“Fine.” There’s not a lot to report if your job is handling packages at an Amazon fulfillment center.
“Are you happy, Dale?” This is, at best, a rhetorical question, and at worst an indictment. If he says anything other than an unqualified yes, she’ll drop any pretense of boundaries and expropriate his entire life.
“Sure, Mom. Anything new with you?”
“What could be new with me? I’m in constant pain with my arthritis, but I don’t talk about it. I don’t want to burden you. I’m thinking about replacing the couch in the den. It’s been broken for years from where you used to jump on it when I told you not to. Your father’s having problems with gas. It’s a good thing I don’t smoke, or this house would go boom like the Fourth of July ”
“A new couch sounds like a great idea, Mom. Well, I have someplace I have to go, so I’ll hang up now.”
“Is it a girl? Do you have a girlfriend? You didn’t introduced us to the last one.”
“No, Mom, not a girlfriend.”
Silence.
“That’s fine, no need to tell me, I don’t want to pry, so long as it’s not drugs.”
It’s not anything. It’s just an excuse Dale made up to end the call.
“No drugs, Mom. Say hi to Dad for me.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“Call me.”
Dale ends the call. He’s all jangled inside. And he still has more affirmations to prepare for posting. Maybe he’ll call it a day on the affirmations. Maybe he’ll go for a walk in the park. Yes, that’s what Intuition is telling him to do. Eureka! Dale pulls up the screen of his running list of affirmations and types “Intuition is the only authority. Type yes if believe!”.
#
Megan can’t believe Tony is dumping her via text.
You’re a wonderful person, and it’s been wonderful to be with you, but I think I need time to figure out who I am and I can’t do that and hold up my end of a relationship at the same time..
Megan doesn’t believe it for a second. Tony’s just tired of fucking her and wants to fuck somebody else.
I know you’ll find someone better able to meet your needs.
It’s a reversible-jacket kind of sentence. It could mean he’s admitting he’s an emotional cripple or he’s saying she’s too needy.
You deserve someone who can hold up his end of the relationship.
There’s that phrase again – hold up the relationship, as if they’re carrying a piano up the fire escape and he has a bad back.
Maybe in six months or so, I’ll give you a call and we’ll catch up.
Translation: don’t text, phone, or stalk me. As if.
May all good things come to you, because you deserve them. Yada-yada. Megan resists the urge to type a sarcastic reply. She types what she knows she should type – I understand. Good luck in your journey. Take care – and clicks off her phone. Megan isn’t brokenhearted. She’s pissed because he was the one to break it off instead of her.
What a way to start the day. Fortunately, it’s Saturday. She has the weekend to get the taste of Tony out of her mouth. It’s only 8:30, but the sun is blasting through the window of her apartment. It’s a good day to go to the park. Besides, she doesn’t want to be in this apartment that still reeks of Tony’s vibe. His vibe is a fingerprint at the scene of a crime, the crime of bad judgment in men. She sticks her apartment key in her pants pocket, grabs a book she’s been reading, and heads for the door.
#
Dale shades his eyes with his hand. Sunshine angles through open spaces between the summer-green trees, already powerful though it’s only 9 a.m. Dale doesn’t mind he has to shade his eyes because the heat feels good against his body. Dale has an affinity with Ra, the Egyptian sun god, probably because Dale might have been a temple priest back in the day. As Ra rises above the tree line and people and plants alike begin to groan under the August heat, Dale will just smile the way all-seeing Ra smiles.
Dale’s mind is filled with affirmations floating randomly in and out of his consciousness like balloons. It reminds him of pigeons at the beach that pester people on blankets for a scrap of sandwich or a potato chip, a flock of would-a, could-a, should-a. Dale wants to get away from them, get away from his mother, just let life unroll however it’s going to unroll without the burden of “doing” something.
Dale spots a couple of benches under trees. One is occupied by a woman in pink shorts with her nose in a book, but another bench ten yards beyond her is empty, as if it’s meant for him. He strides over and sits down. He un-focuses his eyes and takes a deep breath, focuses on breathing in and out, slowing it, deepening it, until everything is a little fuzzy. It’s like opening a window and letting in fresh air, except the air is also light. Dale may not be good at life, but he’s fair to middling at meditation.
After a few minutes, his attention returns to his senses. He looks at the ribbon of asphalt winding through the trees. The walking paths are empty at the moment but that will change. Sure enough, he sees someone emerge from the shade around the bend, a man with a clutch of balloons.
#
Megan lifts her eyes from the book. There’s a man standing in the grass beyond the walking path. He wears a baseball cap that has no team logo. He’s holding a dozen balloons on strings. She wonders whether there’s a fair in the park or if he’s advertising something.
She returns to reading. Her book is about synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence. Synchronicity evidently is something somebody named Jung came up with, though the author says Eastern religions believe in it, too. The idea is events that have no apparent causal connection are actually connected in some other dimension of experience, which sounds pretty woo-woo. If it’s in another dimension, how could we even know? But Jung says there are no meaningless coincidences.
Megan thinks the quest for the meaning of life is a fool’s errand. If there were an answer, somebody would have figured it out by now. Megan has her own answer: sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad, good things happen, bad things happen. Bad things like Tony dumping her. But is that a bad thing? Maybe it’s a good thing. She’s surprised how easy it is to let Tony float out of her life. She feels like she just lost ten pounds.
“What do you say?”
It’s a mom on the walking path speaking to her small daughter. The man in the baseball cap is handing the little girl a balloon. It’s bright yellow.
“Thank you!”
The girl walks ahead of her mom, gazing raptly at her new balloon as if she has the whole world on a string. They pass a little boy wearing a blue Paw Patrol T-shirt. He lets go his mom’s hand and points greedily at the little girl’s balloon. Then he laughs – the balloon man is walking toward him, extending a blue balloon in his right hand. The boy takes it, delighted.
Megan goes back to her book, reads a few pages, but every few minutes nearby movement or the sound of “Thank you!” pulls her vision back to the balloon man. This pattern repeats over a period of half an hour, and now the balloon man has given away almost all of his balloons. He says nothing, asks for nothing, no money changes hands. He’s just giving away balloons. She notices again that the balloon man has no logo on his ball cap. For some reason it strikes her as subversive to not be for one team or the other.
#
Though Dale’s bench is in the sun, a nice breeze cools him from behind, stirring the leaves in trees across the walkway, a pattern of whispering. He thinks of Findhorn, a spiritual community in Scotland that communicates with the intelligence of plants and the angels, divas, and fairies of nature. Working cooperatively with them all, Findhorn miraculously can grow amazing plants and herbs in barren sand. The inexplicable fecundity of Findhorn mutes naysayers who think angels and fairies are woo-woo. Who can deny the empirical evidence of a forty-pound cabbage? Dale studies the movement and sound of the branches to discern if there’s something alive in there. Suddenly his view is blocked by a figure in front of his bench. A man is bowing to Dale. His arm extends and he hands Dale the string of a balloon. Dale takes it. He looks up at the balloon. It’s pink.
When Dale looks down, the balloon man is walking away from him. Dale watches the man disappear down the walking trail and into the shade. A sweet smell hangs in the air around Dale’s bench. Pipe smoke? Pot? Sage? He can’t tell. And now he’s holding a pink balloon that’s bobbing and dipping in a sudden breeze. Dale grips the string tighter to control it as it blows to his right, in the direction of the woman on the bench, the one with the book. She’s watching him. She’s pretty. She’s wearing pink shorts, a shocking pink that lassoes the eye.
Another gust of wind makes the trees noisy. For a moment, it seems the trees have a throat and tongue speaking to him. But what are they saying? Something that feels like a powerful magnet pulls his eyes back to the woman on the bench. She’s still watching him. Again, he notices those pink shorts, bright as a flare in deep shade.
Dale stands. His feet have a life of their own and carry him over to the woman. She holds his gaze. A welcome sign hangs in her eyes. When he reaches her, he stops and extends his arm holding the balloon.
“It matches your shorts.”
“What a coincidence.” A corner of her mouth curls up.
“There are no coincidences,” he replies. Her jaw drops.
“Damn!”
He waits for her to explain. She shows him the book she’s been reading. Dale recognizes Carl Jung’s picture on the cover. Dale grins.
“Damn,” she says again, shaking her head. The features of her face soften. Dale extends his arm again and she takes the balloon. She smiles.
#
The August sun is disappearing into dusk, the crack between worlds.
I close my eyes. I see that it will be in winter, at a third-generation hippie restaurant, when they are celebrating their sixth-month anniversary of being together. Her suspicions will have dwindled to a speck of dust because he’s a puppy that just keeps licking her face. She will wear the Ra T-shirt he bought for her. She wears it not because she’s into Ra, but because it’s a cool picture of an eye. He will be reading Jung’s Man and His Symbols and will wear glasses instead of contacts to look intellectual for her. She will have a Greek salad. He will have a tofu and vegetable dish served over rice. They will drink too much. And, for the Nth time, they will reminisce about the day they met at the park. He will talk about the twin flame affirmation he composed that morning, how he saved it for himself, and about fairies in the whispering trees. She will talk about synchronicity, and they will have to admit, yes, the pink balloon matched her pink shorts. They won’t say much about the man with the balloons. They won’t remember his face, only the baseball cap.
That’s okay. I wasn’t selling anything. I wasn’t asking for anything. I was just giving away balloons.
