Jackson Free Press

Yesterday, in a moment of rage, I slammed a borrowed laptop shut and rolled my eyes at the world while I finished a McDade's plate lunch. A man sitting next to me froze as he bit into a drumstick and absorbed my fury. I was in the middle of writing about my experiences with premonitions and epiphanies, both apocalyptical and apolitical, featuring Dadaism and Dada shoes. Unfortunately, I goofed and exited the screen before saving my work. "Upset was I," said Yoda.

In brief: I had a dream two nights ago where I skateboarded to the scene of a grocery store hold-up. Shots were fired and my mother and another bystander sank to the asphalt still clutching plastic grocery sacks filled with produce and diet cereal bars. Instead of dropping to my knees to mourn the tragic death of my mother, I turned to the gunman and accosted him for owning a firearm. I then spoke to one of my co-workers(apparently he was grocery shopping as well) about my belief in strict gun laws. He agreed with me, but then reached into his periwinkle sweatpants, revealing a metallic pistol. I was dumbfounded. "As long as others own'em, I will, too," he explained.

It was then that I sprang from my sleeping position and began to survey my surroundings, assuring myself that everything was in its right place. It was just a dream. Flash forward two hours later, and I'm walking to McDade's Marketplace. As I reach the corner of the brick-laden building, I notice a police car and a security guard interviewing a distraught woman standing next to a sedan missing a passenger side window. I walk inside to purchase a delicious plate lunch and overhear the chatter from behind the buffet line:

"Tried to steal her purse."
"You know what I woulda done."
"If I would have seen it, I would have told somebody."
"I bet I know who it is."
"White truck."

I was too shy to ask about any further details, but I couldn't help but reflect on the dream I'd had two hours previously. My dream had morphed from an After School Special espousing the dangers of hand guns into a radical moment of clairvoyance. I thought it was a fluke. I went home to read. I moved on.

This morning, while sitting in a small room inside an undisclosed coffee shop, I'm drooling at the mouth over an inspiring piece of New Journalism, 72-hour-party-people. The article details a a journalist's wacky weekend partying with members of the "creative class" as they tweek-out on a relatively new drug from Asia called, "Shabu." I'm reading about how the drug differentiates itself from low-grade meth, both in its inception, and its effects on the user.

I finish the article and thank Allah that I've never:

A. had any desire to experiment with meth,
and
B. encountered anyone face-to-face that is tweeking out of their tweekin' minds.

Two minutes later, my clairvoyance makes a cameo appearance, twisting fate as if it were Gak in the hands of a toddler. O Fortuna, how you spite me so.

Crouched over this borrowed laptop, typing furiously away on a sports-related message board, I hear the pervasive steps of a bundled-up stick figure entering the room. She is grasping a cup of coffee as if it were the urn of a dead cat and her smile is as genuine as an underpaid birthday clown. She politely says hello and I return the pleasantries. I continue to type about the uncertainties surrounding the upcoming college football weekend, but I find myself typing excessive statements in an effort to avoid the 'unwrinkled vacuity' which would ultimately grace our presence should the finger-stomping cease. She giggles a little when she notices my reactions to my typos and then begins to outstretch her arms. She moves them up and down as if she were making snow angels.

I wonder if she's ever rested on top of a snow-covered sidewalk and made snow angels in an effort to stay warm.

Great expectations aside, I ponder what'll be her opening line when she finally decides to talk to me. I'm wearing earphones, so maybe this is an obstruction. This may be completely cold-hearted, vain, disgracing, etc., but I'm in no mood to speak. Not because I'm afraid of what she'll say and afraid of what I'll learn, but because I just realized I am more powerful than John Edwards( the psychic, not the adulterer) and more screen-ready than that guy from Early Edition.

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I once asked a dear friend a serious question concerning the future. His credentials include working in the super computer labs at the University of Mississippi and basically being too smart for this or any other planet.

"How close are we to time travel?" I asked without a hint of sarcasm. He grinned a little to amuse me. He thought I was 'having a laugh.'

"No, really," I continued, "how close are we?"

He then delivered a fascinating lecture documenting mankind's advances, God's input, and the cons of science. Or maybe it was 'conscience.' Though I had trouble keeping up during this intergalactic journey through time and space, I learned that we are far from joining Bill and Ted on their next Excellent Adventure.

But if I could somehow travel back in time, I'd find this poor woman at a positive point in her life, and explain to her the horrors that are yet to come. I'd advise her to stay away from this person and that substance, and explain that it is absolutely imperative that she believes me.

"But how do you know this?" she might ask.

"I'm clairvoyant."