By Noah Pohl

Featured Art: “Bumblebee” by Leo Arkus

(March 27) 

Today, I came to work eleven minutes late. My co-worker Lenny said he didn’t know if he could cover for me, even though he thought I was “cool” and “down to Earth” and “pretty for twenty-four,” whatever the fuck that means.  

Lenny is sweaty. He sweats near the hot dogs sometimes, and that’s not cool. I try to avoid Lenny when he’s in one of his moods. He cries loudly in the Target bathroom because of his impending divorce, but he’s also extremely hairy and his eyebrows are out of control. Since his wife left him, he kind of resembles a giant, lumbering piece of sage. I know because I smudged my apartment last night to keep the bad spirits away. 

I also made sure my Target Pizza Hut uniform was clean ’cause I dumped Alfredo sauce on myself yesterday like a total dope. It smelled like hot garbage. Then I got quarters from one of the girls at the registers so I could do my laundry. No more free laundry.  

I mean, I feel like that’s a metaphor for something, I just don’t know what. 

(March 28) 

Target is having a sale this weekend, so all the crazies are out and trying to buy our little personal pan pizzas.  

I hate my life.  

(March 31) 

Sorry, I didn’t feel like writing the last few days because I was feeling low. Six planets were in retrograde, so I figured it was OK to just accept my state of confusion. I’m trying to practice total acceptance. 

Two days ago, I had a terrible date with this certified yoga instructor from Mindful Meetup, which is like Tinder for patchouli-loving weirdos like me. He said I was “his destiny.” This was twenty minutes into the date. But he had really humongous thumbs, which freaked me out, and he smelled like coconut lotion. I also got the sense that he sounds like a dying horse when he has sex. Don’t ask me how I know that, but I could somehow sense it with my third eye. We won’t be going on another date. 

However, he said I could get fifteen percent off a yoga package if I ever wanted to sign up for any classes at his studio. 

Work was slow today. Only three people bought food. I just made the required amount of heatable pastas to put on display, made sure the hotdogs were stocked (gross), and listened to Enya’s Greatest Hits on Spotify, which always makes me feel like I’m bearing witness to something important, when I’m really not. 

(April 2)  

For months now, I’ve been obsessed with this magical mountain in Northern California called Mount Shasta.   

I didn’t know why, but I’d heard it was super sacred to the Native American tribes, so I Googled it. People claim it’s where the survivors of this lost, sunken continent of Lemuria escaped to. Apparently, most of the continent fell into the Pacific Ocean eons ago during a crazy fight with Atlantis—and these seven-foot-tall beings of light called the “Lemurians” live there, hiding out. Inside the mountain.     

I also heard there’s a city underneath Mount Shasta called Telos, made entirely of light and crystal—and it exists only in the fifth dimension—so you can’t really see it, unless you’re, like, super-gifted. People on the Internet claim there are multiple doorways and tunnels leading to the “City of Light” hidden on the mountain.  

Also, in the late 1800s, some eighteen-year-old kid wrote a book called A Dweller on Two Planets, which he said was channeled from a “spirit being” inside Shasta. It predicted things like anti-gravity and voice-operated typewriters…   

Holy fuck, this place sounds amazeballs.  

(April 3) 

Lenny is sweating again. Sometimes I think his whole body is crying tears.  

I offered him some healing crystals, but he said he didn’t want them because “they’re such bullshit.” I said I would still pray for him and send pink healing energy bubbles his way.  

Sometimes I wish Lenny would meet a powerful, spiritually-woke woman who would help him change his ways and see the beauty of things. 

And also shave his back, because he needs that. 

(April 5) 

There’s a new employee at the Starbucks kiosk across the way from me! His name is Burt Loeder and he’s pretty dang cute.  

He hasn’t wanted any pan pizzas from me, but I’m debating if I should go over to get a coffee and a pastry. I don’t want him to think I’m weird, though. 

I might act weird because every time I’m around assholes (like Lenny), I feel like I balloon to about a thousand pounds in my head. My theory is that it’s because I have a porous energy body. It’s like my etheric body becomes hella weighed down, only because I’m taking on everyone’s bad vibes.  

Victim to the vibe, that’s me! 

Anyway, according to my Vedic astrologer, who I can barely afford to see—except on a sliding-scale—I’m epically screwed if I don’t wear my energy crystals. She also said I should stop working at the Target Pizza Hut, like, immediately. But I can’t just quit! I’m saving up for my Mount Shasta trip! That means another few weeks of eating canned tuna—boooo. Plus: the Awakened Consciousness website that I read says I’m gonna basically die tomorrow if I keep eating crap. I wish I could go vegan, but I just can’t stop eating cheese.  

I’m such a failure. Yet, I accept myself.  

Because my flaws are my supreme teachers. 

(April 8) 

Mr. Hottie, aka Starbucks Burt, wasn’t working today. He’s been out all week. Maybe he’s sick with the flu or was attacked by spirits. God, I’m such a chicken-shit for not talking to him. 

Instead, I got a cookie from Starbucks because I was feeling low and chocolate was required.  

That cookie saved my life. No joke. I wish eating cookies helped to raise my vibration, but they just make me happy and noncommittal. 

(April 9) 

The only person in my life who ever truly appreciated my spirituality was my one friend from high school, Darius Shahrzad. She was Persian and had this amazing, huge nose with a nose ring and she did her own henna tattoos—but people made fun of her for having the same first name as the guy from Hootie and the Blowfish. I wish I had a big nose like hers, ’cause I think people with big noses are cool. 

She was really funny in an undercover kind of way. And super-obsessed with these purple flowers called lupines. She would go on and on about them every spring, and make me drive her to the fields outside of L.A. so she could take a million pictures that she’d ultimately never post on social media. Turns out, lupines are totally fucking badass (flower-wise). It’s because they take nutrients from the air and redistribute them to all the other surrounding plants—but they do it underground, low-key style, through the soil. Secret rescuers of the plant kingdom, claimed Darius. It’s funny, I think my friend Darius was kind of like a lupine herself.  

Anyway, we used to talk about crystals and meditation and she said that I should be kind to myself, to “just be weird” because “that’s the good shit, that’s the stuff that’ll bust people’s guts.” She told me that depression comes from being what others expected me to be, so I should stop running from the best part of myself, and more importantly, stop apologizing.  

She was really spiritually-gifted.  

Right after high school, she jumped from a high-rise in downtown Los Angeles.  

It doesn’t negate any of the things she said to me, it just means the noise got to be too much. She would constantly tell me how she always felt like a space alien, like she never truly felt at home on Earth.  

I miss her and think about her every day. I still talk to her and I hope she hears me. 

(April 10) 

Starbucks Burt smiled at me today. I almost fainted into the display case. 

I feel like Burt’s beard is a deep well of mystery. I just want to go swimming in it. I always liked men with big beards. They seem like they just stepped out of the past. 

Plus, I can tell he’s like this total surfer dude, who gets easily worked up about things. I bet he doesn’t drink fluoride and listens to a lot of Slavoj Žižek.  

If I was stupid—like all the girls from my high school—I would make a hashtag and tweet about this moment. But I won’t.  

Instead, I will simply enjoy the fact that my heart is full, nearly bursting. 

Hashtag…heart full, nearly bursting.  

(April 12) 

Today, I told Burt about my Mount Shasta trip.  

He said it sounded “dope as fuhhhhuk.” And that the weed up in NorCal was supposedly super potent. And…could I bring some back for him?  

I said yes, totes, absolutely. 

Then he told me his girlfriend was a big weed person. And my heart cratered through the floor, but I smiled and said that that was awesome. 

I also said I’d bring him some sacred rocks right from the soil of Mount Shasta, because they would elevate his consciousness.  

As a thank you gesture, Burt slipped me a free cake pop from Starbucks.  

I wished his girlfriend saw him do that, so she’d be super jelly.  

(April 16) 

I reduced my social media time on TikTok and Facebook to one hour a day because I have comparison fever again. Also, I’m worried that sometimes I want to click on the laughing emoji when I should be clicking on the “wow/surprised” emoji. I don’t want to be seen as laughing at someone’s PAIN.  

I’m spiraling with my sads, so I went to see my sliding-scale astrologer and she told me my true love was coming to me, but not for another year. What the fuck, universe?  

She told me to calm down and meditate more. That I still had lots of planets going into retrograde, shifting my landscape and getting me to “level up big-time.” Apparently, it’s so I can be ready for when this special man would be “delivered via destiny’s FedEx.”  

Instead, what I have in my life is sweaty Lenny and unavailable Burt Loeder and his super-hot, probably-model girlfriend who definitely gives him like twenty blow-jays a week and then blogs about it to her super-bitchy Insta-followers.  

So I smudged my apartment (again), because I feared I was attracting negative spirits with my thoughts of jealousy and hate.  

Then I ate a pound of dark chocolate because I’m a total heathen, but it made me happy.  

Plus, antioxidants. 

(April 26) 

Sorry it’s been a little while since I wrote in here, but big news! I finally saved up enough to book my Mt. Shasta AirBNB. I leave in a week!  

It’s not a big place, but it’s super cute and totally quaint. I’m staying in Dunsmuir, this little railroad town just outside Mount Shasta, with this AirBNB lady, Aimee, who seems super chill and hippy-dippy and really into dreamcatchers, just like me. 

Starbucks Burt said I was “glowing” today. I thought only pregnant women glowed, so suck it, preggos, ’cause I’m fired up.  

Okay, I need to calm down or I will scare people.  

Also, Lenny cried at work today over his impending divorce, so I gave him a hug. Then he tried to grab my ass, so I punched him in the ear. 

He apologized and said he was very lonely, so I retreated to the bathroom and reluctantly sent him some healing pink energy bubbles. 

Sometimes I think I’m just too nice.    

I leave for Shasta in a week.   

(May 2) 

You know that feeling when you’re simultaneously really, really lonely but want to connect with people, and no one is around to talk, but you also don’t really want to see anyone except on your own terms, and they probably can’t, so you’d rather be alone? That was today. 

I started my day where I couldn’t seem to get any joy from anything, where everything felt foreign at once and simultaneously way too familiar. Like I’d just rented my own body and brain and I was in the dressing room, trying to get everything to fit, and it just wouldn’t. I was clamoring all morning just to get back to baseline. My favorite breakfast sandwich, fourteen Youtube videos about 5-D Earth, Hindi sound bowl music—none of it worked. But then I thought about the aliens under Mount Shasta. And that I was about to drive for the next nine hours straight toward what I’d been obsessed with for months, and in less than thirty minutes, I snapped right out of that funk!   

I left at 11:37 AM (way too late) and spent the entire day on the 5 North in my little, second-hand Subaru Impreza—aka “Suzie,” for those of you who don’t know.     

I drove past this megafarm feedlot along the highway—filled with miles of farty cows—which usually depresses me a lot, but I said a few prayers for the sad, tooting cows—and that they be reincarnated as something awesome in the next life. Then I got a veggie sub at Subway, because I’m not a cow-eater.   

As I drove, I listened to almost all of Wayne Dyer’s Excuses Begone! on Audible. I feel like Wayne and I may have known each other in a past life. The sound of his voice makes me feel like everything in the world somehow makes sense.  

I wish Wayne would adopt me, but he’s dead.  

Rest in Peace, Wayne. I love you.  

(May 3) 

Since yesterday, I started noticing an accelerated sense of time. Like, I would look down, and then when I look up, it’s four hours later. This sort of time-gap thing is weirding me out.  

And I’m seeing repeating 3’s everywhere. I saw a bunch of triple-3’s just this morning! So I Googled it, and repeating 3’s are apparently a sign from the Angelic realm that the Universe wants you to “trust what you are creating.”  

Also, 3 is known as the childhood number in numerology?  

OKAY, GUYS, I GET IT. I’M AWAKE. You don’t have to bludgeon me here!   

After getting into Dunsmuir super late last night, I needed a day to do nothing. So I spent most of today exploring this little railroad town on a hillside and eating green pepper pizza at this tiny Italian place and staring up at Mount Shasta and just napping.    

I hike the mountain first thing tomorrow morning.  

(May 4)  

Like a sleeping, snowy, ginormous giant… here she is.  

The instant I parked near the base of Shasta, I could sense that my friend Darius was around, energetically.  

And as soon as I started hiking the trail, I felt this little electrical pulse—almost like someone had dropped a tiny hair or a spider web over the left side of my head. I kept swatting it away, like I could get rid of it, eventually realizing it wasn’t leaving.  

Something was trying to tap into me, and it wasn’t Darius.  

Nothing popped into my head as far as an actual thought—no delivery download of information—but I took it as a sign that some kind of forest intelligence, perhaps a nature fairy or wind sprite, was trying to make contact. 

I didn’t see it as dangerous, I saw it as hopeful. Maybe a confirmation! 

A few hours later, the vista from my hiking trail opened up to this amazing three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. Up here, the air was super thin and the sun was crazy intense. I looked for hidden doors and tunnels into the mountain on my way up, but saw no signs of either. I was exhausted.   

Then I spent a moment taking stock of where I was.  

Just days ago, I was standing behind the counter at a Target Pizza Hut, hating my life. Now, I was celebrating my birthday atop the most sacred peak in California. 

Alone, maybe. But never truly alone.  

I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for all the living beings on the planet. I imagined my heart opening up and healing all the animals and all the plants and all the sad people on the Earth. Then I said a prayer for my friend Darius, and spoke aloud three times, “God, I surrender to your plan, please help me to step into my purpose.” I imagined a chain dropping from my feet, anchoring me to the center of the world, circling back up and wrapping me in protective, healing blue and white light.  

I imagined the ground opening up and a crystal cathedral—spires glistening in colors I’d never known—clawing its way up from the Earth, lassoing every cell of my body, giving off a light that wanted nothing but told me everything. Everything that I could ever want to know about anti-gravity and voice-operated typewriters and a battle lost to a war-waging Atlantis. A light that shone on my past lives, and my reasons for incarnating at this time. One that told me of a million Lemurians huddled in a mountain when destruction was imminent, while the rest gave their lives to the rising oceans. A light that incinerated every rage and fear that I’d ever known—and could lift an entire sunken continent. 

When I opened my eyes, I expected to see the city of Telos.  

But there was no cathedral, no crystal pathway, no hidden tunnel ushering me into a sacred metropolis of seven-foot-tall light beings. There was only me, a mild breeze, and the suffocating feeling of the now.  

Birds chirped in a nearby patch of Ponderosa pines. A tiny sagebrush lizard skittered across the rocks under my feet.  

Disappointed, I waited another half-hour before turning around to hike back to my car—but on the way down, I noticed something I’d completely missed on the way up. It was easy to miss because I couldn’t see it from the way I was facing while I hiked.  

About fifty feet off trail was a narrow-but-mighty brook, trickling its way through a wide meadow. Right in the middle of the meadow, a number of spiked stalks grew four to five feet tall, swaying gently in the breeze.  

The purple lupines were in full bloom.       

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Noah Pohl earned a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University. A finalist for the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize in Fiction, his work has appeared in Litro Magazine, The Jabberwock Review, The South Dakota Review, Passages North, Post Road, and Eclectica Magazine. He lives and works in Southern California.