short story | The Magic I Utter, Deliver, and Receive

A year ago, my Mexican friends and the traveling spirit at Minerva prompted me to go on a spontaneous solo-backpacking trip in central Mexico, where this happened:

There came many a time when the god within, without, above, under, in, of, from, for me has spoken. “Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life,” the god would later have spoken thus, yet I already know it. “Maktub: it is written.”

Go back to that bookstore, the god said. On the opposite side of the street, I had already walked past and on. Okay, I looked right and left, crossed the street in La Roma, and went in the second-handed book-store.

I asked if there was an English section. He pointed to the back of the store, second-floor. I went up. I dug in. I knelt down. I perused all the shelves, high and low. In the middle of it all, The Alchemist, is a title I recognize. 56 pesos. Enough for a meal. I could save the money and just go back home to the San Francisco Public Library, where another copy of the book costs nothing.

Except that sometimes, many times, all of the times, costing nothing costs everything.

The god had told me so, when I was almost ready to get up and on, walk down (the stairs) and on. Except that I wasn’t ready. No, you are not ready.

Buy the book, said the god gently but forcefully. I decided.

I paid for the book. He handed me a bookmark, printed slightly off-angle. But all the imperfections seem so perfect, at this moment, beyond this moment, in all the every single moments.

Later, that evening, I went into a tea house. I sat down in the very center of the high stage in the very center of the room in the very center of La Roma the very center of my adventure very center of my life center of my universe, I got the message. I was the messenger, the one who uttered, the one who received.

I tripped, and I arose. Everything came full circle. In the middle of my impromptu solo backpacking trip, I sat in Caravanserai and wrote fervently in a cactus-covered notebook. I was reading about a boy’s impromptu adventure in the desert, and he was reading I, me, mine.

All the decisions I have ever made amalgamated. When I uttered, delivered, and followed them, I dived into a strong current that carried me to places I had never dreamed of when I first made the decision. “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.” The Alchemist comes back to me through the hands of a friend (and who’s to say he isn’t also a god?), upon my arrival in another foreign land, in the center of my Seoul/soul.

“The entire universe conspired to help me find you,” my book, my lover, my Minerva, my adventure, my life, my Seoul/soul, my fire, water, and thunderstorm of a heart. This is but the end, just the middle, only the beginning, I say.