Do I Dare Disturb the Universe & Other Messages from Coffee Shops

I appreciate a nudge from the universe every so often. This being Asheville, it doesn’t give up if you don’t notice the first time.

One day last week, Zoë and I were chatting over cups of coffee & chai at the local coffee shop, when I noticed a young girl working intently at her laptop on a nearby former piece of tree.

There were words written on her arm, but only a few peeked out from under her sleeve, teasing me with this unfinished thought…

Do I dare disturb…

“Mum, don’t,” said Zoë, knowing what was about to happen.

“I won’t bother her,” I promised, “unless she looks up.”

Just in case, I had my camera ready.

“Do I dare disturb the universe,” the girl with the long ginger hair told me moments later, when I did actually dare to disturb her – ignoring the dark clouds of disapproval on my daughter’s face.

“It’s a quote from T S Eliot.”

She told me these words have special meaning for her and for how she’s charting out the rest of her life – once she completes her Masters Degree in writing from a nearby university.

Unable to shake the quote from my head, I looked it up and found the words in a line from the “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Oddly enough, I had seen those words on another person in another coffee shop, two and a half years ago in New Orleans.

Two like minds in two different coffee shops? Sure, of course.

But also a persistent nudge, or reminder, from the universe to get going with whatever it is I will dare to disturb.

Author: kristin fellows

I am a documentary film consultant, writer & photographer. And once upon a time, I lived in Asheville, North Carolina. I am really, hopefully very nearly finished with my first book, "Lions, Peacocks & Lemon Trees" – a travel memoir that follows a collection of old letters half way around the world, from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Ethiopia to Portugal and Italy. Other adventures have taken me to Iceland to hike volcanoes and photograph puffins; to Barcelona, Mexico, and Croatia. I went to Athens for a big fat Greek wedding, to Helsinki to get beaten with frozen birch branches in the city’s oldest public sauna, to Portugal to track down the backdrop of an old photograph, and to Italy to travel in the footsteps of my late grandmother. My travel articles have been featured in Pink Pangea, a travel blog for female travelers, and other publications. One of my photographs, “Skywalker,” was chosen as a National Geographic Photo of the Day in 2015. But many of my favorite stories still come from the nearly eighteen years I lived in Asheville, which you can read about in my blog, "On the Edge of Appalachia." I also invite you to join me on my newest adventure – "Oceans of Love" – in which I move to a small farming village in the mountains of central Portugal and nothing goes as planned. View all posts by kristin fellows