Vibe Patrol.

"When we are in a centered, peaceful, 'available' state, the vibration of all we are transforms to high energy."

-Caroline A. Shearer

How to stumble after a fall.

The following is an anecdote from a past life. I do not recall the exact date, as I was, myself, just beginning a return to consciousness from an extended period of self-inflicted, alcohol-induced oblivion.

I know that policework is difficult. I won't pretend to be a professional. I only managed this by accident. Once. Everybody gets one.

It was the early goin' of the second comin' of the roarin' twenties. I was cosplayin' a whiskey-sippin', smoke-rollin' detective, down on his luck. Everywhere I walked, I imagined that the world quaked beneath my... Puma Legacy Dark Modes.

How to Find a Dragon.

I don't know the guy's intentions. I don't think he was malicious. I think he somehow thought that I was an opp.

I can't say I blame him. In a way, I was doing what some cop should have been doing.

At the time, I was close with a long-lost friend of mine, who struggles with her mother. As a result of this - probably at tension with her obvious desire to be close to some mother who values her, and some father who does the same - plus a nasty bump to the head when she was a kid - or some other calculus involving The System, she experiences Borderline Personality Disorder.

She still struggles with bitter liquids, though when I met her, they still bit her worse. It wasn't only fluid courage - the crystals which lined her purse have led a lode of brilliant nodes to an early hearse.

She got upset with me one night for coming to her rescue, at her request. In that interaction, I failed my friend and let her short fuse get the best of me. She walked into the night, distraught, having threatened to call the cops on me for her boyfriend's misinterpretation of "benevolence" (read: violence, enacted by someone meant to be a benefactor) if I followed behind. So I did not.

I did make note of her direction, and layered in past stories' connections - however hazy these wavy recollections may be. Something called out and told me that we'd cross paths again.

I would later discover that she had dropped her phone before slamming my dad's Prius door on me.

Early the next morning, I set out on foot to earn my own redemption.

I first braved the Dragon's Den - her mother's husband's well-built abode, wherein are contained absolutely no flaws, whatsoever. Despite the utter Perfection I witnessed within that home, I received no insights into the possible whereabouts of my friend from her mother - only reassurances that it was 'not your responsibility, but good luck.'

How to Look like Spiderman.

Up the next street I strolled, and mathed some mental nodes. Knowing dark crystals' sinister intentions, I set out at tension - tall, grey, in showboat shoes, to boot.

I nobly made note of which houses (and neighbor networks of them) looked likeliest to harbor either old or drug-afflicted people, both groups with which my friend had described interacting.

Following a couple of entirely inconspicuous passes on my part, a Chad in aluminum armor spotted me side-eye spotting him, and we sort of did a psychic "same spidermans" meme moment. Speculatively. Scientifically - mirror neurons.

How to smell like a hawk.

By that point, the jig was up. I could smell his chemical energy from half a block away, and just as well - I could tell by the way he was welding. There were a ton of juxtapositions of high hopes and underdelivered dreams, which seemed to me to scream, strewn throughout his boldly-displayed hopescape.

Right. So, we had acknowledged each other. Psychically, speculatively.

Next, I waved to him with my empty right hand. At the time, I was experimenting with tonal authority, and I think I spooked him a little.

We discussed the dropped phone dynamic, and he asked some reasonable questions about me and what I had told him. I mentioned during introductions my friend's storming off, and he drew from there a logical enough inference - that if this woman had forced herself out of my vehicle, I must have been behaving poorly toward her.

In my open explanation, I described the personality disorder with which she has been diagnosed, and I alluded to knowledge about the local use of "some substance." I made it clear that I was there for my friend, a woman of whose presence he would have been aware. We find out later that he and the hospitable older man with whom my friend had sought refuge were crystal-crossed lovers in a past life.

How to win when outwitted.

Long story short, we open with a small, wiry man - who really enjoys welding, "accidentally" pulling a gun out from beneath the front seat of his truck. I was looking about haplessly, totally relaxed in my musculature. Whatever his intentions as he approached the truck, our exchange went about as follows:

"Don't worry, this isn't for you."

"Huh?"

"The gun."

"Huh?"

"Oh, nevermind. I had a gun there, and I was just letting you know I wasn't pulling it on you."

"Oh, cool. I wasn't even thinking about that."

We went on to spend the next two hours in his driveway unpacking both the trials and the highs he had experienced with his ex, who he - flawless in character, himself - had lovingly dubbed "Satan," before inviting me into his home.

Once inside, he allowed me to jot down a note for my friend using his stationery. How kind.

From there, he told me about his wolfdogs. I think he maybe was a furry, judging by the wolf plushy in the far corner of his living room, and other inferences about his proclivites. Interesting guy. No judgement.

There is only so much thread one can untangle at once. He lamented the high prices web devs had quoted him in the past. He was shocked at my comparatively low rates. I ultimately reunited my friend with her phone, whereafter we experienced the sequence which includes an instance of psilocybin guiding I may have committed in a past life, and may describe in a future story.

Want to know what was going on under the hood during this experience? Tomorrow, we'll discuss the tactics I chose to employ, as well as spaces where I slipped up.