A new coffee shop has arrived in the hood, and with it, another place for my favorite Saturday ritual: read and sip, look up occasionally to contemplate, and say hello to a familiar passers by.
Sometimes, I get the uncanny, paranoid sensation like Will Ferrell in Stranger than Fiction, that I'm in a movie that's sort of a combination of already written parts mixed with alternate parts for choosing. Hold on, let me explain before we go down the road of self diagnosis, consider this for a moment: During the day, very often, I yell out, "Synchronicity!" Not like a nervous outburst, like "Fire!" or the obnoxious and loud pre/post lunch hiccup that echoes through our building matched with a jolly reply through the wall, "Hey Crystal!"
It's just a yell in my mind. And, some days, it's all day long. Answering my existence like the pool game where you close your eyes and yell, "Marco" while the person who's "it" yells back, "Polo" in order for you to hear where they are and tag them.
SO, I'm drinking coffee, reading, and look up to see Byron squeezing drops of honey from one of those restaurant squeeze bottles they use for ketchup and mustard and honey, into the musician's mouth, back onto his throat. He had stopped by to play a few songs before the show last night, the fundraiser for Heather, and his voice was losing, so he'd asked for some honey and Byron had delivered. It was a good image in the sun, the rays, honey drops falling from Byron's squeeze bottle, a young musician with his guitar round his neck and his foot on a tambourine. So, I looked back down to carry on reading page 103 of C.S. Lewis, Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, and immediately without a single half of a moment of hesitation my eyes went directly to the words on the opposite page that read, "a few drops of this will restore you." It's the part where Father Christmas gives Lucy her gift. It's a cordial made of the healing juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow in the mountins of the sun and the dagger to defend herself in great need. I know it's not good to focus on oneself too much...it can become a thirst that will never be quenched. But, it does make me wonder why I hear a lyric on the radio and within a moment, catch a road sign or board with the same word in it. Or, think of a friend I haven't thought of in years, and run into them at the grocery store the very next day.