I am all sitting at a tall countertop with very tall chairs as the wind blows past from the open windows. I reach back behind my chair and grab my jacket behind me. It smells like coffee with a lot of sugar and almond milk in the cafe. As I put on my jacket, the waitress walks past with my coffee, a double espresso and two sugars. As I am sipping my coffee, I hear someone mention him. Beck, he was the first one here, on this afterlife interpretation.
Sadly, not the last. As he and his adventures grew, more people came to this place. Which was quite a problem for Beck here, so he trained more and more people to assist him in his job. But we don’t know how or why, or anything about this journey that has changed everything, to have a safe journey, a sanctuary for everyone who has found the want to be a part of what he created. I am not here to learn about what he created because I live in this beautiful place that now so many people know and feel comfortable with everyone. What I am here for, though, is to find out how he created this place that I can’t stop thinking about. There is just no place that I would rather be than in this safe space for all who make it in, but now I need to finally tell you what I need to learn about. I need to learn about how he made this all happen and how he created this world that I have committed to being perfect for. I am doing this to inform the world, to be satisfied with myself, and satisfied with everything I know.
So my quest is to learn and I am starting here in this cozy little cafe by asking around to see if people have a part of the story that I am trying to piece together.
“Does anyone here know anything about Beck?” I ask.
At first, not a person wants to help me. They are all eating their pastries and drinking their coffees. But eventually I hear an answer.
“Yes. I was one of the first here.” They start to walk over to my table and I shift slightly around to look a bit more at their seventh caramel pumpkin spice frappuccino and them behind me.
“Hi, I’m Ray, I asked if anyone knows about Beck,” I say.
“Yes, that would be me, so what do you know about Beck?” they say.
“Well, I have a book about it,” they say, while turning around to reach into their backpack and pulling out what looks like it could be up to five hundred pages, with a leather bound cover and lock. Then they put on their tiny, little reading glasses and open to the first page. I start to get ready for a super story…
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I was with Beck when there were only eleven thousand and five hundred people. Keep in mind that this was before he had trained thousands of people to assist in this process, so we had quite a lot of time to hear some stories.
The first story that he shared was what his life was like before he, you know, died. He said that he grew up in Park Slope, always going to this one special ice cream place that he loved to keep going to so that he could have the wonderful flavors that kept rotating. One day, it would be chocolate, and then the next, it would be pineapple. He loved being able to give other people who were sad a gift card and to go there with them if they were glum because he loved seeing their perfectly unsad smiles.
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