Back to School

One advantage of a wandering mind is its availability for less-conventional input. Such as the time I sat in high-school English class and found myself slipped into a rushing recollection, accidentally recapturing another “iconic” moment. 

I had just died. Seconds before, I had been in the midst of some passionate struggle, my heart given over in a fevered intensity. Something really mattered ...

But as I entered a peaceful, enveloping mist, I suddenly remembered an entirely different reality. All at once, something else really mattered ...   

“I can explain everything!” I shouted at whoever would hear. But I knew it was hopeless -- I had already had the lesson of the mist, in some other in-between, and I’d gone down there and forgotten. Again. 

I had killed, again. Wrong.

But it was really important, I argued feebly. We were fighting for our freedom. I tried to convey the hell down there, of not living free. 

It could not have mattered less to those in charge. There were no excuses, no arguments, no exonerating clauses. 

It was back to Mist-ery School for me, before yet another try.

Years later, a psychic told me that in a recent life, I’d lived in Haiti, where I and others had stormed a government building, fighting for our freedom. I’d killed, she said, and was killed in return. 

I’m sure you’re right, I told her.