I had an Guardian Angel Cabbie.

I'm still upstate. Leaving on the red eye greyhound tonight after 3 weeks at Nazareth College. Saturday, I had an entire day off. Allen was off at a work call and then strike. I was in his house alone without transportation and the walls starting closing in on me.

So I called a cab to bring me to a mall. Any mall. I didn't care. I went to yelp.com and called the first number on the list (yelp ranks by rating).

This man named Al from Ethiopia picked me up, a nice guy in his late 40s. He had his MBA and a house on Lake Ontario. He used to work for Merrill Lynch and made 6 figures as a national merchant. When the economy exploded, his job asked him to relocate to Atlanta. He had raised his dead brother's kids and they were off in college, but he just couldn't sell his house. His amazing house on the shores of Lake Ontario. So he lost his job. He couldn't uproot his life. There he was, an Ethiopian middle aged transplant who was affluent, educated and out of work. And he couldn't get work.

So he researched the business mediums of the area and discovered that the taxi business has very little fluctuation financially regardless of economic status of an area. He started working for a local company for three months to learn the business and opened his own company immediately. He has five cars and amazing word of mouth/internet press for his company. He makes good money, "not big money, but good money" and is happy.

So I asked him, after he dropped all these huge national names he used to work with, if he was happy doing this seemingly lesser or remedial job now after all of the success he had experienced. Without hesitation he answered yes. He told me that in the last two years, of the three colleagues he was closest to, 2 had heart attacks and 1 was fired after relocating his family. He's watched the market crash and see his accounts disintegrate on the news. Everyone thought he was crazy for staying, for reducing himself to a cab company, but he insisted it was the plan for him. To stay put and live a simpler, "more divine" life.

"Nikki, how can the soul flourish if it has no roots?"

Then I was at a broken down Macy's in the depressed Rochester Mall.

The Universe is a mysterious thing.