Several years ago I was wandering among the tortillas at Food City when a voice I didn’t recognize called out my name. I don’t know about you, but when I shop, it is with a run-on sentence in my head that goes like this (with a little variation depending on the week):  Get-apples-lettuce-tomatoes-maybe-purple-onion-mozzarella-cheese-corn-tortillas-do-we-have-toilet-paper-upstairs-shoot-I-can’t-remember-get-olive-oil(not-the-expensive-kind)-Greek-yogurt-and-no-more-M&Ms(because-you-know-what-happened-last-time)-and-oh-yeah-wine-god-do-not-forget-the-wine.

Any interruption and the sentence breaks down and I have to start all over again.

I looked up reluctantly. The voice belonged to a woman I never really knew, who I’d heard had moved away some years earlier. I took in her long, braided hair, beaded earrings, and suncatcher necklace, hoping to find, in the gestalt of it all, her name.  

“I’m back,” she said, rather obviously. I stared at her.

 “Last year I got a message from a Native American spirit that instructed me to go to Utah, where I was to die,” she explained.  

I had a few questions. Who are you? Why Utah? Can’t people die in all the states? Of all the questions I did not want to ask, “Tell me more about your message from the Native American spirit” was at the top of the list. In the end I didn’t ask anything.

She went on. She said she’d packed her bags and said goodbye to her family. When she got to Park City she made funeral arrangements and, although she was only fifty-two and healthy, she waited patiently for death.

A year later, she moved back to Chattanooga.

I told her welcome back and said she looked well, although I couldn’t recall what she’d looked like the last time I saw her. I did not address the dying because that seemed like a personal matter between her and the Native Americans. Also, I was in a hurry to finish shopping and get home.

“I think maybe I got someone else’s message,” she said.

“Ah, that makes sense,” I said, as though it did. I turned to go.

“While I was out there I thought I got a message from you,” she said. It was a verbal gauntlet, thrown down just as I was about to make my escape. I whipped around. My grocery list exited my head.

“Like, by email?” I asked. Had I accidentally included her on a thread, and if so, about what?
“No,” she said, “Through a Native American channeler.”

“Oh of course,” I said. I glanced outside at the darkening sky. “Out of curiosity, what did I say?”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” she said.
I told her welcome back again and that I was glad she was alive, but that I needed to finish shopping and get home to my dogs. As I walked away, she said, “I love you.” A strange message, I thought, better intended perhaps for someone who knew her.

This encounter came back to me last week when I was at a luncheon where little matchsticks were passed around, on which were printed inspirational messages meant to spark creativity. I was excited as I waited my turn to draw a stick. I didn’t think immediately about the errant messages my acquaintance had gotten all those years ago, one from a spirit and one allegedly from me.

I had to squint to read the tiny writing on my matchstick, which seemed only fitting when I finally made out the message: “Hone your powers of observation.”

I loved this! There were so many ways to think about it. Careful observation opens up the world, reveals nuances and sides of people and intensities of color and the kinds of reasoning we might otherwise miss. For a writer, observation is everything!

But later, I wondered if perhaps, like the woman whose Native American spirit dialed the wrong number at the wrong time, maybe the matchstick I got was meant for someone else. Maybe I was supposed to get my friend Jim’s matchstick, which said, “There’s always a way to build a better mousetrap; what can you improve upon?”

There was no way to know for sure, though, and I wasn’t inclined to trade, because what if—like a stone thrown in a pond that somehow results in a tsunami in Japan—trading fortune sticks set off a ripple of events that reverberated around the world and ended with some sort of edict that I must, under penalty of death, rewatch Fight Club and The Matrix every single time they air? For this reason alone I decided to roll with “Hone your powers of observation.”

But had I received that message because I’d been remiss? Have I been overlooking the nuances of things in favor of the easily distinguished, the ordinary, the obvious? Is there something I’m not seeing that I should be seeing, here and now, and especially as 2025 comes to a close and a new year looms with all its unspoken promises and opportunities?

Now that I mention it, I can think of a grocery list of things I need to attend to going forward, vigilantly and with a measured eye. My-mother’s-well-being-and-the-frequency-of-my-visits-and-my-old-dog’s-health-and-my-new-dog’s-training-and-my-husband-and-my-writing-and-my-friendships-and-my-body-and-my-mind. And-the-wine-oh-my-god-don’t-forget-the-wine.

Messaging may be an inexact science. But I do believe we’re constantly getting input from everywhere, including tiny matchsticks, and, for all I know, the Native Americans. And of course, even Fight Club and The Matrix come bearing their own messages, about a whole lot of things, including about the superpowers of observation.

So here is my message to you: Have a happy new year, and may all of your messaging be clear.

*********

Dana Shavin is an award-winning humor columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and the author of a memoir, The Body Tourist and of Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love, Home and Dogs, a collection of her most popular columns spanning twenty years. She is the Literary Arts Program Coordinator for the Dalton Creative Arts Guild. More at Danashavin.com. Email her at [email protected].