the path

*Just bought Tori Amos's Tales of a Librarian. It's AMAZING!*

For those of you who haven't watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose, please do watch it. Don't watch it because you want some excitement of spinechilling specters like those in the completely silly The Eye or The Ring or whatever.

Watch it because you want to know more about wisdom.

I am not a fan of horror movies since I'm a real chickenshit. But this one is amazing. I've been a fan of Jennifer Carpenter since White Chicks and I when I knew that it was her playing Emily Rose, I became intrigued and the movie is very satisfactory.

One scene that I won't forget was when Erin Bruner (the lawyer, played amazingly by Laura Linney, as usual) found the gold locket when she was just taking a walk. The gold locket had the initials ECB, the very same initial that Erin has (Erin Christine Bruner). She said that of all the people who walked there, only she had found the locket.

She added that no matter how many sins she's committed, right then and there, she was walking on the right path, the path that lead her to finding that gold locket with her initials inscribed on it.

Everything happens for a reason.

God puts everything right in God's time.

I firmly believe in those two sentences.

There are stories, personal stories that support the sentences. But the most recent one just happened a few hours ago.

I love cats. I adore cats. I think of myself as a cat.

I went home after circling the housing area near Thamrin, since I remembered that I once discovered a secluded house of a dermathologist, and I kind of need a consultation. My trusted dermatologist only operates during 09.00 - 17.00 on Mondays to Fridays and 09.00 - 14.00 on Saturdays. The exact times when I am at the office.

I found the house of the doctor and she only works until 18.00. Fuckin' Great. So I went to a store to buy my usual facial care kit and then went home.

About 5 meters to home, I saw something on the road. I'm always paranoid of things on the road, and that night, my fear was true.

It was a cat. A kitten to be more exact. Of about 5 months. Lying dead. A hit-and-run victim. Her head was broken. And she was still warm.

I stopped my car at an instant and jumped down off my car. I don't care about other cars honking behind me. There was still another lane and they could use that lane. I ran to the kitten and ran back to my car to open the trunk, took anything I can take to cover the body and I found a thick paper.

I ran back to the kitten, placed her on the paper and carried her to my car. I put her on my lap and tried to start the engine.

It won't start. My mind raced to superstitions. People say that bad things happen to people who commit road kills, especially to cats. I didn't do the road kill. And why did it happen to me?

I prayed and tried again but it didn't work.

It was only 5 meters away and there were two people and they helped me push my car to home. One of the people reminded me to bury the kitten with the shirt that I had on. It was my NEXT shirt, the one I wore to my catechism ceremony in 2001 and it bore many memories, but at that moment, it didn't matter. It still doesn't matter until now.

After we've burried the kitten, I phoned my parents and Mom told me to call the 24 hour service. I phoned and they came about two hours later.

It turned out that my car battery was at the brink of death. My car is a year and a half old, and it's about time that I replace the battery.

That kitten. That car. That battery.

What if I hadn't stopped by to buy some soap and a CD? What if I hadn't called an affectionate friend who confided in me about the discrimination he got because of his sexual orientation? (He works at Astra Motors Indonesia, the very same company from which I bought my car, the very same company who came to service my car). What if I hadn't sent him an important SMS message to trigger him to give me a misscall and triggered me to call him back?

What if I hadn't come home that late? What if I had come home five minutes earlier when the kitten was still alive? What if I hadn't found the kitten? What if I hadn't stopped the car?

What if the battery died on the road when I were on high velocity? What if the battery died on the parking lot when I were trying to go home? What if the battery died while I were driving on an empty street at the dead of the night?

Mom said that the same kitten was out there playing in the morning. Isn't it amazing how few hours really mean?

Everything happens for a reason. The dead kitten was a warning that I should change the battery. My car engine wouldn't start not because I got cursed. It was a gift from whatever force who wanted to tell me to change the car battery.

The dead kitten was my gold locket. And I was meant to be on that path.