“It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Charlie is 10, but I suspect he’s lived before. There is no telling what his past lives were like, if he was a prophet or a peasant or a tulip or whatever, but I get the feeling he has been here many times prior to all this. It’s not because of any specific thing I’ve witnessed either. He doesn’t ever smell like some ancient fish market. I haven’t walked into the living room to find him chanting Mongolian war mantras with his eyeballs rolled back into the creepy whites of his peepers. It’s more of a vibe, you know? Like, more of a feeling.
Mostly he says little things that surprise me.
Like, he begins a lot of sentences with, “Dad, dontcha know… ” then he plugs in his factoid or question and I stand there smirking at him like he is some kind of Jimmy Stewart from 80 years ago.
“Dad, dontcha know when all the streetlights come on and the moths come out, dontcha know that the bats love eating those things?”
Who the hell says that? Dontcha know? No one has talked like that since The Three Stooges.
Now, it’s possible that I’m overstepping certain lines here. I know it’s not exactly socially normal to go around proposing to strangers that you think you might have a respawning soul on your hands. But what can I do? Something in Charlie’s smile, as wildly guilty and disarmingly charming as it always is, makes me feel that he just might be harboring some real ghosts down in the dark shadows of his cellar. But I also don’t think he has a clue about any of it either, which is the very best part in my opinion. The way I’m thinking, Charlie has walked this precious Earth time and time again long before me or you were here. And because of that, he probably has secrets he can share!
But what are they?
What are the Secrets of Charlie B??!!!
Hit this link and send me $50 and I’ll tell you!
The idea of reincarnation makes sense to me in ways that most other post-death scenarios just don’t. For one thing, the idea of returning to Earth over and over again, life after life and death after death, doesn’t seem to have been made into a brand just yet. Although I’m stymied by how that is. You’re telling me there isn’t a trillion dollar transmigration plum just begging to be plucked from the social media tree? How can that possibly be? Think about it; legions of young, sexy bros and bro-ettes staring at us through our phone screens, rhapsodizing in real time about the many lives they have lived before this one.
I was a hardbodied beach keeper in Greece in the 1300s!
I was a beloved painter and sculptor in Rome in the BC times!
I was a knight!
I had a harem!
I was a Prince and a King and a God!
And don’t forget about the greying enlightened older influencers. You know, the ones with yoga bods and really fat 401ks. They’ll be talking quietly at us down the TikTok, telling us how they sometimes seem to recall certain scents and sounds of the Beverly Hills Farmers Market back before all of these $12 heirloom Brussels sprouts/ back when L.A. was still a place where Native Americans were baptized Christian at gunpoint/ way back in the good old days before global warming’s Devil fingers set fire to the entire hellscape.
People would go apeshit for this stuff, I’m telling you. With all of the mental health madness going down, there is a wide open barn door just waiting for someone like me or you to come waltzing on through it. I am here today to tell you how I’ve been here before. And the lessons I learned along the way. And sure, sure, many folks with firmer minds might balk at the idea of past lives and the wisdom they can offer, but fuck them. There are always a few people who need to turn to science or whatever to try and bash a brilliant marketing strategy upside the head with the Lead Pipe of Sanity.
I don’t listen to those people and neither should you. There is money to be made out here in this wild west. Now, who wants to be richer than old King Mana Musa?
Full disclosure: There are times when I try to clench my eyes shut and dig deep with my creative mind fracking gear so that I can come into contact with some past version of myself. This kind of commercial desperation sucks though. Truth is, the more I mine for gold in this life, the further from the veins I seem to stray. I don’t know how or why but for some reason hope and ambition have always spelt rejection for people like me. I’m like the hobo who dreamed away his life hoping to become an honest to god freight train instead of just riding around on them.
There are two kinds of people in this world, my Pop-Pop used to tell me. The ones that know which way the wind blows and the ones that are always chasing their hat down the street.
Across the long silent moment that followed, he’d look at me with his ragged sharp battleship eyes, take a long slow gulp from his can of cream ale, and then he’d knock my hat right off of my kid head with a sudden gust of his free hand.
See?!, he’d laugh. You’re a hat chaser, man!
Look at me there, husky little shit. Down on the rug, picking up my hat. There ain’t no reincarnations in me. I know damn well I’m one and done, man. I know damn well it’s the worms for me.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
