The already barely audible sounds of at least a dozen shoes crunching against dead leaves in the distance became more muffled than before, even drowned out one might say, as he heard a familiar voice calling his name from behind. 

 

A mixture of thoughts always accompanied these everyday moments, for to be called was to be seen and to be seen was to be finite. Finite and temporary. How long can such a moment last? With one perhaps too enthusiastic turn of this finite man, Aurora came into view, unaware of how she already ensured a firm grip on his attention with her voice that effortlessly bounced off the pavement and the walls of the neighbourhood below the open sky. 

"Has anybody told you how handsome you look today?", she jested. 

"Surprisingly not", an utterance coupled with a grin and raised eyebrow was all the starstruck body of his could manage to express in its heat of unexpected delight

"Well, there's always tomorrow!"  

 

If only that were true. 

 

Unlike the roman goddess, this Aurora is also goddess of mourning, not just morning. And it was a good thing to be that, as one rarely meets someone who knows how to mourn well, to mourn deeply and authentically. This might paint an unsettling picture of a sunrise, but Aurora was and continues to be the furthest being from sorrow. Quite the opposite in fact, she was one of the most positive and energetic individuals he knew and for that reason she was able to mourn everything from the loss of an dragonflies' life to the destruction of an abstract idea (and everything in between). 

Every snippet of time with her had become so uncontrollably precious, even if it was just a brisk walk. In light of that, everything also increasingly seemed to be blurred along the lines of primordial experiences, fantasies and algorithms, all bleeding into the same. 

 

Unsurprisingly. He'd been having odd dreams as of late. Three Mexicans, two brothers and one sister, possessed by demons after their father was killed by a jeep, who can only be calmed by a mystical fruit found in the forest. A rain burdened land covered in green moss and thick vines and inhabited by sloths three times the size of humans. A world where nothing but an ever-shifting landscape of colourless grass and living trees prevailed. These were the nighttime hallucinations that seemed to transcend a life of mediocrity. But what keeps anyone in a state of mediocrity? What brings them out of it? These are questions that troubled him on his way to the office, where his day would mostly consist of responding to emails, drafting proposals and managing the lives of people, reduced to anonymous visages, who always appeared to be thousands of steps ahead of him. 

 

Today felt different. Yet don't all today's feel that way. 

 

The way to the train station was briefly interrupted by a pamphlet hanging from a streetlight.

"You cannot tempt be to become what I already am", it said, next to a movie cover. 

It meant... nothing? The light breeze forced the man and the pamphlet in two different directions. 

Going off the train was when he met Jesus. 

His thoughts raced upon approaching him with his thoughts. 

"It's not that I am currently feeling a lack of control in my life and thought I could just summon Jesus out of nowhere at my convenience. 

It's not a time of feeling completely helpless for me either.

It's also not that I'm some big fan of Jesus and can't live without his company.  

It's just that sometimes Jesus is there right when you need him, perfect timing. For me, that time is today I guess."

 

He sat next to Jesus on a bench, and a moment of silence followed the weeks, maybe even years now, during which they had not seen each other. Their last encounter likely left both of them feeling disappointed. Jesus surely felt treated like an ATM while his friend felt inadequate. 

"You're a better man than I'll ever be, not a nuisance or boring". 

Silence hang in the air, but he knew what Jesus would respond to that. 

"If only you knew how equally pathetic and amazing we can be times".

Jesus always had one of those insights capable of defeating a crowd, though he preferred the term "pearls of wisdom".

Like the fact that the existence of cardboard was supposedly a paradox, since something couldn't be a card and a board simultaneously. How insignificant that insight seemed. Of course, even his name had to be equally confusing. Apparently, everyone always spelled it wrong. It's not Jesus, but Jesús. Jesús Alejandro Diego Garcia Francisco del Santo Flores, born in Arequipa, Peru. 

 

Before crossing the busy street that never seemed to be free or hurrying cars beside the Jesus bench, he softly left his body and looked onto it as an outsider would. He traced the veins along his pianist hands, skin dry but not flaky, folds wrinkled but not calloused, wrists scarred but not wounded. How beautiful those hands of that stranger are and what wonderful things they could create and embrace, perhaps they were worth sparing. A fleeting thought. He crosses. He could not be tempted to become what he already was. Beautiful. 

 

Today did not merely feel different after all.  

 

He skipped work today. 

Spent all his money going to town only for him to realize, he might skip the office forever. He might take responsibility for his sanity. He might overcome banality. For who would not want to:

 

Fall in love with the sunrise

And find God in every stranger

Or see holiness in the unholy palm of one's hands

 

Perhaps sometimes the biggest step into the future is the one without any plans. The realization that one life gives you one of every type of moment to cherish and then never again. To give up a feeling of mediocrity and feel like somebody part of something. To want to die living and not to live dying. To yearn, to ask, to reach, to grasp. To love. The ordinary is a blessing. Sometimes going all in means seeing the divine in banality and the divine in sanity.