A small breeze waiting for the rain
Here is a small story that comes from a little restaurant in Ram Buttri in Bangkok as I wander the Earth writing them down as I go.
From somewhere a little breeze comes and finds me looking up from my coffee to see the smell-less lady arriving with her man arm in arm.
Without any fuss whatsoever they glide across the floor and sit in one of the armchairs together and giggle at each other.
Well that’s a good start to a new story I think and go back to my coffee and waiting for the rain that’s due.
The page flutters in the breeze of a revolving fan, the radio on silently and small talk here and there in the cafe.
A tuk-tuk splutters by with two tourists on their way back to their hotel, clutching their shopping tightly.
Ringo Starr saunters by incognito while some men at a table out in the narrow road play cards.
A small breeze in between the electric fans sends a faint smell of patchouli past me and I am reminded of the sixties when everyone would wear it with their sleeveless fur coats or kaftans and dangling beads and toe bells.
It was just a small breeze that blew a memory my way for a moment evocative in a timeless way and without any need of explanation to let me know that life is as long as it lasts and there’s no other deal but that and that thriving is no more than a moment of joy lived.
The fortune teller in his turban offers his card to the hapless backpacker and follows him up the narrow road, but there is no fortune but this, that we all come and go on a small breeze and there’s no telling of what will or will not be but where the breeze blows us, for me anyway, and I think the fortune teller is in the wrong business as he wanders around the narrow road looking for just one who will go with him to tell of things that need no telling.
The tee shirt says: same-same and hangs to be bought in a stall of many all covered with tarpaulins and the sun comes out to make everyone hot and now no one knows if it will rain or not except maybe the fortune teller, but no one is asking him.
Some languages almost have a secret way to learn them and the more you listen to them the more they remain a mystery. Money seems to be a language everyone understands for the sellers and buyers alike to settle on an agreement yet it seems such a foreign concept to sell yourself for paper and coins while the heart remains un-aroused; but for now it seems it has to stay same-same until all can agree a better way that is more equal for all and not just for the elite to benefit.
But I digress into a dark place to talk about such when the day is so magical in this place that has so many possibilities.
Everyone has a gift and a purpose to live it and I see in the narrow road so many passing by who search among the trinkets for some clue to their desires as the card players play and the fortune teller calls for a client constantly walking up and down and the tourists keep coming and the foreign language is still mysterious to my ears and now the Beatles sing: we can work it out from the silent radio’s speakers, hidden somewhere in this open air cafe.
A taxi pulls up just outside and a woman in a thin cotton dress, blown by the breeze gets out and pays then walks off into the narrow road to become one more tourist looking at all the things for sale, but really is dreaming of somewhere far away where the sea calls her.
I find myself running to take off with this story in the breeze as a kite to soar but I am entranced in the moment of being here and find the here is everywhere of where I am so I drink coffee and wait for the rain as a man wearing a baseball hat comes along pushing his cart of fruit and ringing a bell a ding, ding, ding and passes right on by down the narrow road into the far distance of the little breeze of this story.
Images from Pixabay