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

Documentary film consultant, writer & photographer Kristin Fellows is based in Asheville, North Carolina. She has worked as a documentary film consultant for more than 125 films on a multitude of topics. Kristin’s adventures in the past several years have taken her to Iceland to hike volcanoes and photograph puffins; to Barcelona, Mexico, Addis Ababa, and New Orleans for street photography; and most recently, 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 her late grandmother. Her travel articles have been featured in Pink Pangea, a travel blog for female travelers, and other publications. Her photograph, “Skywalker,” was chosen as a National Geographic Photo of the Day in 2015. Kristin is very nearly finished with her 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. Educated in both London and the US, Kristin also has a cherished diploma from Álfaskólinn, the Icelandic Elf School. Kristin is the niece of the late New York Times foreign correspondent, Lawrence Fellows. Follow Kristin on this blog and on Instagram @ kristinfellowsphotographswords View all posts by kristin fellows