'An Eventful Sunday...
We are in Cafe Ole... It has a Sunday afternoon feel; a group are sitting at a table together, uproarious laughter emits every so often, people are chatting and eating together, enjoying coffee and cake together...
A guy who appears to be very high, or drunk (or both) is saying to me... 'You have a very good husband, he is a very calm man...'
'I do have a good husband', I smiled...
And he is very calm... We ordered some drinks earlier, a Banana Smoothie for Anadi - a Ginger Zinger for me...
The drinks arrived, but something went awry as our waitress was putting them on our table, and the Zinger leapt from its glass and went everywhere...
Anadi acted fast - his livelihood in his laptop...
He whipped it off the table and turned it upside down, while I reassured our waitress not to worry at all, that these things happen, that everything would be okay...
She was very upset, and kept saying 'I am so sorry', and I kept saying, 'it's okay, really it's okay, it's okay...'
Meanwhile mops and cloths and napkins were appearing, and Anadi was clearing Zinger from his upside down keyboard ... Very calmly...
He powered down his computer and continued to clean, and I continued to reassure...
Very soon everything was restored to 'as it had been before', and a fresh Ginger Zinger had magically appeared too...
Anadi turned on his computer... 'Is it okay?' I asked... ' 'It seems to be...' he replied...
When our waitress returned, we said, 'There, it's like nothing ever happened...'
'But it did', she said rather forlornly, and I said, 'ah but you have a good story to tell' and then she laughed...
And that's it really, if something happens, it's very important that we don't hold onto it too tightly - the good and the bad things - they need to be cleared from us, the lessons learnt, the bits extracted that we need for now.. The rest must simply become part of our story, so that we are not held or limited by it in any way....
The narrative of our lives is interesting, and how it is told can vary from which position we look at it from... In the same way that when there is an incident, different people will report it differently, depending on where they were standing, their own perspective and their own memories. We look through our own filter, however much we are keen to be clearing it, and this will mean we notice different things... So it is with our lives, the key is to erase any memories that hold us, bind us, tie us up. This way we can tell the story of our life, as a story... We can tell it in as colourful or varied a way as we like, because it simply becomes a story, part of the richness that is us! But it is not who we truly are...
Our new friend has just returned to re-iterate that Anadi is a calm man, a good man...
He stayed and chatted - through a bit of an alcoholic haze - he said to us that he liked our eyes, that he liked us... He said 'I want to tell you about my past... You will not hate me if I tell you?' 'No, we won't hate you...', so we listened to his story about his criminal past...
And then after awhile he said to Anadi, 'She is watching me' and then he laughed a bit shyly - and looked away...
'What did you see?', Anadi asked me after our friend wandered off for awhile. 'I saw that he is gone from himself', I said, 'and that as I started to see the real him, he turned away...'
All we all truly want is to be loved and accepted for who we are, and to be seen. But so often the moment that we feel the connection we crave, we turn away from it, because it reveals where we are severed from ourselves...
And so we exit in all sorts of ways, whilst still seeking connection - looking outside ourselves instead of within. We seek it in our work, or our sport, or food or alcohol - or in many other ways, that paradoxically keep us running from our own truth....
Of course, none of the things I have listed need be about disconnecting, if we are committed to staying fully present to ourselves in every moment....
He didn't want to leave us, wandering back again and contining to talk to us about God and love. He showed us his tattoos, a rose and a butterfly on one arm, and on the other a scorpion... In the end, we said that we needed to 'crack on dude' (Anadi's words) it didn't deter him a lot, he sat at the next table and at odd intervals said 'I like you guys, I like your eyes' - but we cracked on anyway...!
This morning we set off at 6.30am so that we could have some time running with the sun not so hot. The humidity is always high here, but the air felt cooler...
We ran fifteen miles running laps along the beach, across the scrubland and down the Pigeon Island road. By staying down there rather than running up to our wild land we were able to 'properly and continuously run...' There are parts of the land of the cactus and the wild horse that are not runnable, by us anyway... I imagine practiced fell runners would leap and bound their way through... but not us!
So today we lapped our beautiful lap six times! Each lap we saw that something was 'going on' on the beach... Crowds were gathering, more each loop, and there were men with flippers and snorkels in the sea. Nets were being pulled in and was much shouting and giving of instructions from the beach....
We stopped at half way and bought coca cola - it felt the perfect sports drink at that moment...
A priest in long robes came up to us as we drank...
'I've seen you guys before', he said 'lapping the beach here... It is good to take care of the body...' He carried on his way and then suddenly turned back 'do you enjoy it...'? 'We love it'. Ah - that is good', he said and was gone.
A young man was sitting on a table nearby. 'Is that sweat man?' He asked, looking at me in wonderment at my streaming, dripping body. 'It is...' I laughed, 'man', he smiled shaking his head....
On the last lap of the beach there was much commotion and we saw the results of the activity - six huge barracuda - about four foot long - lay dead and dying in the sand, and as we approached there was much splashing and pulling and shouting, as a huge sting ray was dragged, gasping for breath onto the sand...
It wasn't great to witness its distress...
As we ran on, one of the fishermen was standing on the beach by the Barracuda - the man looked fit in his body, still in his being and clear in his eyes. We stopped to talk with him... He had fought a battle with the barracudas, he showed us the bleeding cuts on his hands where they had bitten him...
I spear them first before bringing them in.... He told us, 'or else they would tear the nets with their teeth...
'Wow, what a life..' I said
'Yes' he replied 'It's a wonderful life...'