In the mid-90s I joined a book of the month club. It was one of those clubs where if you failed to deny that month's book you were sent and billed for it anyway. Remember Columbia House? Yeah, just like that. Actually, such a thing doesn't exist anymore and I am kind of disappointed. Anyway, I often forgot to cancel. The result is that I got a lot of books to read that weren't necessarily something I would normally do so. I discovered a lot the period 1993-1994. Mystery, police procedurals, and spirituality.
One month The Celestine Prophecy landed in my box at the post office. It sat collecting dust while I read first and caught up on the other books that had come before it.
Finally I picked it up.
It took a few attempts to get started. It seemed hokey at first. It is poorly written by the way, in such fashion as someone was talking or dictating the story. Well, it is a story after all.
I did not know what it was but it immediately evoked a memory of a few years early when I had an interesting cassette on repeat in my car. It was one of those things someone picks up at a gas station. I remember getting it. I was falling asleep on the long drive from Victoria, across the ferry, across the Fraser Valley and onwards to Kelowna. I had opted for the Coquihalla toll highway so as to avoid the Hope Slide area. It always gave me the creeps. Anyway, at the half way point I realised I was going to need fuel - soon. There appeared a gas station off the side of the highway. I filled up there and, trying desperately to stay awake bought a music cassette of something highly annoying to jar me awake. I ended up plugging in this music unlike an I had heard before. It was 1991. I can still hear it. Weird. New Age.
What the heck was new age? I didn't know, I didn't care to know. But it got me through the next 2 1/2hrs. So weird.
What was truly weird is there is no fuel station at the top of the mountain highway. I have been over the road eight times since and not seen a fuel station and none appear on any maps? Was I that tired and out of it that I don't recall where I stopped? Scary.
Finally I was able to bite my teeth into the book. I read it in a single sitting. Well as close to a single sitting as being a mom on her one with an active two and seven year old (oh those are difficult memories) would allow.
The Celestine Prophecy has an important pivotal place in my mind and heart. It got me asking questions. I knew what I wasn't but hadn't known what I was. Now that would take until 2010 to start answering that question but at the time it was a real knock in the head to figure it out. And so, during the summer of 1994 I would embark on a journey to a place only recently reached.
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