On the phone with my sister yesterday, I decide to walk across the street and put a couple of bottles in the recycling bin. Phone to my ear, I open the small gate and find myself face to face with a man.
He is the gentleman who walks around the village selling pretty bamboo blinds. I have seen him before and several times I have considered asking him how much he charges. Suddenly, here he is, in the process of readjusting his load around his shoulders and now intent on selling me something. I'm on the phone and in a different mode. But like I say, he is intent. Follows a conversation between the two of us, my sister chuckling on the other end of the phone (while correcting my Spanish grammar) - me assuring him that I do not need any blinds, him assuring me that I do. Knowing very well it wasn't a good strategy, I enquire about the cost. Roughly the equivalent of one day of my food budget. While I ponder this fact, he seems to intuitively pick up on the whole food theme because he switches his topic from how much I do need the blinds to how much he needs food. He is hungry. He really wants to eat. That's when I know I'm done for. He wants to eat. I have food in my fridge. Looks like the next day's food budget is going to him. Plus didn't I say just yesterday how much I wanted to cover an ugly spot in my yard? Win-win, I guess. Minutes later, off the phone and still not having dropped off my recycling, I am precariously perched on a chair hanging the blinds using a couple pieces of twine. That's when I hear him again, over the fence. He's back and telling me what a good deal he would give me if I wanted to buy three more. This time, I am strong and he hears it in my voice. He says adios and walks away. My redecorating done, I turn around for a good look and I love it. I love it so much that I may find him today and buy two more. I have plenty of fruit in the fridge. I woke up and all of a sudden, the dust bugged me.
The dust which I have been sharing my life with for six weeks, now. The dust from the road, the dust that I dance with every morning as an act of love when I run a cloth over every flat surface in my house. The dust that has my teeth feeling as though they are wearing little tiny teeth-socks by the end of the day. It's everywhere and it's not going anywhere. But this morning, it bugged me. And then I couldn't find my paring knife. And all of a sudden, I didn't want Mexican food for breakfast (this part usually takes me only 5-6 days so I got a big break this year) I heard myself whining at the mop, not wanting to hand-wring it. Then at the bathroom floor, which I just painted. Then at my mosquito bites. Lila just laid there, happy as a clam. I took a cranky walk and then I got home, opened my fridge, and sliced through a piece of passion fruit I bought yesterday. The way it smells, the way the soft insides pull away from the skin, the way the seeds don't really feel like seeds. The way it TASTES (passion fruit tastes the way my Parisian childhood dreams fantasized). And suddenly all is right again in my world. Dust and all. It's good to let the crankies have a place to whine. And it's good to let Life's Gifts melt them away too. WHEN we're nice and ready and not a second before. On my way home, I walked past a man selling slices of cheesecakes from a little wooden table.
Since it would have been an offense to life's goodness to not buy one, I did. I got home, ate it, and then checked my texts. A friend had sent me a message about the latest US political news, which made me immediately need another slice of cheesecake. Plus, it was a friend's birthday back in the States, and since I could not be with him, it made sense to have my slice plus his. All kinds of reasonable justifications for heading back out to the little table. On my way there, I started to waiver a little bit about my mission. But then, I found another loophole! Since I would be going to go pick up my laundry a little late, what I would do would be to actually buy four more slices (stick with me, here) so that I could gift three of them to my laundry washing family/neighbors/new friends. One for the mom, one for the dad, and one for their daughter. That felt better. Now I was no longer a will-less glutton; instead, I was a generous, community-oriented person. See how I did that? But when I got to the little cheesecake table, there were only three slices left. Which gave me relief. My Essences of Decadence and Pleasure would be completely satisfied by treating my friends. My butt felt smaller already, just knowing I had dodged that extra piece of yumminess. Back to my street, balancing the three boxes of pastries, I knock on the door of the lavanderia with a big smile. "I have cheesecake!" To which the mom answers: "Wow, that's wild, I just MADE cheesecake!" And then adds: "You must taste it." Long story short, I left their house with TWO more pieces of cheesecake: the one she made (which was the best) and the one-from-the-little-table which they just had no room for. I'll let you guess what happened once I got home. Let's just say it did not involve leftovers. Yeah, so that's my story of Multiplying the Cheesecakes. Quite the parable. |
SCARED OF THE SACRED
HAPPINESS SCHOOL:
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