Reincarnation? That’s a laugh. Why would anyone come to this godforsaken planet deliberately?”
The young man walked towards the Metro. It was raining, the media screamed of earthquakes, volcanos, war and famine; a tsunami of bad news. He shivered in his thin jacket.
The companion smiled, “Earth is not that bad, you chose this incarnation to learn a specific lesson, you know”.
“My boots are leaking, I’m freezing,” grumbled the other. “If I really were to choose my life, I’d be lying on a beach in paradise surrounded by pretty girls”.
His hippie friend explained that there is beauty everywhere, but you have to open the eyes of your soul to see it.
“Forget what you are being told about the world, all the news and talking points shoved in your face constantly, it’s just psychic cobwebs. It will wrap around you, blind you to what you are actually experiencing. Look around, see what is here, now, in front of you”.
He pointed at a tiny patch of green, a small plant struggling to survive in a crack between pavement and wall.
Ducking into the concourse to escape the rain, the other was already rolling his eyes, opening his mouth with a rebuttal but stopped.
A girl sat at a public piano, playing the opening bars of Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’.
His mother had played it when he was a child and the memory pulled at his heart.
An older woman, bundled up against the cold walked towards the music; putting her bags at her feet she opened her mouth and started to sing.
Her voice, unexpectedly beautiful, soared over the clatter of trains, golden, sublime, and the young man glimpsed understanding.
maggiex 