Sentencing

The third day of my bi-annual personal pilgrimage to visit the oracle again continues to follow a set pattern. I return to the place I went yesterday, but this time I go anti-clockwise. I walk up the ramp past these shrubs and enter the building through the main entrance at the front.

My relationship with these plants is wholly unfair. Yesterday when I left, my desire to escape and my quest for food meant that I paid no heed to these cheerful plants. Usually, when I return the following morning I am in a state of heightened anxiety and their exuberance seems to be laughing at me. I am about to receive my sentence and can think of nothing else.

There are only two possible sentences, both of which are approximately equally probable, either life goes on in much the same way for the next six months or it becomes suddenly very different and interesting. Either I will spend the next six months assisting travellers or I will spend them travelling to seek assistance. At this particular moment I feel completely alone in the world, I am a minimum of five hours travelling time in either direction from a hug.

Today there is no unfamiliar variant of my name, my identity has been reduced to a simple bar-code. Did I say reduced? Inaccurate. The bar-code knows my full name, my date of birth, my address, my mobile phone number, the name of my late father and the name of my disease.

I take a deep breath, collect my words, numbers and images and take them to the back of the building where they are interpreted for me. The news is good and life continues as before. I reward the Norse gods by visiting the shrines of IKEA and TIGER.