I woke up this weekend in a 2-3-drink level mild hangover funk. Both days. I rolled out of bed for yoga and then rolled back into it to stare at the ceiling, my favorite activity. I’m not going to diminish the fact that I was having a mini-existential crisis, wondering if my future was in LA and processing the fact that I’d left my job, my home, my friends and community, and my old self behind. I was alone. I wondered if anyone other than me would save me. “Is there anyone there?” I asked. Negatory, I concluded. There is no God. Just a Gracelette. Damn.

My cure for this was not more cowbell. It was a focaccia pesto vegetarian panini and french fries outside Bistro Figaro.

I shuffled in a black and blue romper that is way too short for me to wear anywhere other than the beach and in a neighborhood where I know no one. It was breezy and sunny, projected to be in the 90s. I imagined myself on Sundays at Le Monde in Morningside Heights Manhattan, sitting outside on wicker-ish chairs reading the New York Times, except that I was reading a sky blue paperback copy of “Popular Lyric Writing 10” while typing notes in my iPhone. The man on the shared wicker bench to my left looked artsy and seemed a bit gruff to the waiter, who delivered and took away the check. Why does he have to be like that, I wondered.

The man turned to me. He was about 60, pudgy, with medium length reddish wispy wavy puff of hair. He wore architectish indie glasses that made him look like an artist, and he had a dignified air about him. I wondered if he was famous or psuedo-famous. His black shirt stretched over his stomach and tucked into his pants. He had friendly eyes, and I trusted him immediately in spite of his grumpiness to the waiter. “Are you a musician?” he asked.

“Uhhhh, not exactly. I’m a recovering corporate person,” I responded and explained that I was charting a new professional path.

We talked about the healing powers of creativity and taking a break.

“Why? Are you an musician?” I asked.

“Yes, but I took a long break. I spent the last 15 years taking care of my mother. The last four years I was changing her diaper every four hours. It was very difficult,” he said matter-of-factly but with no regret or resentment. “Now I’m getting back to it.”

He explained that he made music with Tibetan bowls and that he had one in the car that you could put on your head, and it would shoot some people up to the stratosphere in their minds – in a real way, even though their bodies stayed on earth.

I murmured some inane filler comment about how I periodically went to sound baths. Even though I had more to say, I don’t really like explaining what I think in great detail unless I’ve decided to become invested in the conversation. I dipped a french fry into the circular ceramic ketchup pod on the upper-left edge of the plate wondering if my panini was getting cold. I don’t like cold food that’s supposed to be hot, including things that are even meant to be cooled before being eaten.

“Did you study fine art?” I asked.

“Yes, I studied it. I used to do installations for art galleries, but I saw too much about the corruption in the art world doing that. Doctors giving their wives galleries to run. I also collect art. I have a portrait of Emma Darwin. It’s not worth anything. Do you know who she is? Yeah, she’s Darwin’s wife. She didn’t want him to release his work to the world. She was a spiritual woman, and the idea that we were related to apes. To think that we have only been around as long as we have, and the universe and time are infinite…well, that means…”

He paused before continuing.

“I believe there is a God. There is a lot we don’t know and can’t explain, but it’s real,” he said.

I agreed because I do agree in spite of the conclusions I came to while having my existential crisis that morning.

“There were two times I heard a voice. Yeah, in my head! When I was 17 years old, I went to Big Sur with a friend. He stayed at the camp site, and I decided to walk. I found a trail and walked a path that was 4 feet wide with 30 foot drops off a cliff. I thought I was going to fall and that no one would find me. Then I heard a voice…”

He turned his entire body to face me and looked intense into my eyes.

“It said, ‘It’s not your time to go yet.’ It was a real voice. I was shocked.”

I felt a bit of a chill, looked around, and squinted my left eye like I do when I’m thinking. I concluded the universe or God or whoever was sending me this person to tell me something. Obvious conclusion, right?

“Forty years later, I heard the same voice again. I was living with my mother, and my girlfriend lived next door. She had a tremor, so I sometimes had to feed her. I was going to go to the flea market, and suddenly, I heard the voice again. ‘Mom’s not going to be around much longer.'” He imitated the deep slow voice.

“It was the same exact voice! When you hear a voice like that, you listen! I stayed, and my mom had a mini-stroke and stopped breathing. I breathed into her mouth, and she woke up and sputtered. Then she stopped breathing again, so I breathed into her mouth again, and she came back again. A few years later, I was with a friend. He had the same mini-stroke, and I knew exactly what to do to revive him. There was a reason why I learned that and went through that experience.”

Now I was convinced the universe was sending me some message to decipher through this guy who looked like hipster Santa Claus.

He showed me his digital art on his phone, accidentally also showing me a photo he took of geishas on a screen, and we talked about the democratization of art. Then we talked about T.S. Eliot and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” He recited the entire thing to me while I stared off dreamily into LA’s version of Park Slope, feeling the feels of how that poem always made me feel, a certain nostalgia and connection with the deeper undercurrents of life.

“I wrote poetry too. Want to hear it?”

“Sure,” I pursed my lips.

He angled himself intensely staring into my eyes and recited two of his poems, one about George W. Bush and the other about greed. I don’t remember much about them other than the fact that they were really remarkable. There’s no doubt he was talented. I was a little less convinced about the digital art, but the poetry was spot on. The last line of the one about greed concluded in something about sadness and shrinks charging for every tear, except that it was much more evocative and poetic, of course.

“I’m Walter,” he said. “Grace,” I responded. I gave him my business card and shook his hand.

“The most important thing is to give thanks. I feel lucky for what I have,” he said.

I looked at him squinting my left eye again. Why is hipster Santa Claus telling me this? Is the universe sending me a message?

He is the proverbial voice in my head, I concluded.

He left, and I honed in on the table to my right. A woman was screaming on the phone about money, berating her employee. “I’m sick of this. You don’t know anything about business. I’ll deal with you later.” This was all about a $1.99 discount on the shipping price. “Just accept the offer, and I’ll deal with you later,” she said angrily.

Message received, universe.