A cow moos loud and I jump out of bed, realising I overslept. Did a Moo just wake me up? I think to myself, still pretty sleepy as I catch the time (6:42am) and I turn on the water.
I do the normal morning things and then step outside just after 7:00am, step over cow poop and step onto the corner. I wait for a ride. It doesn't take long.
It's a young guy. He remembers me. I don't remember him. I don't like when that happens. He doesn't seem to mind.
He asks me a lot of questions. About things besides where I am from and what I study at UPEACE. I like that. I'm tired of those questions. He asks me why I shaved part of my head. He asks me why I have stitches above my eye. He laughs at my responses. I don't think he's judging me. I just think he's laughing. I appreciate his authenticity.
I ask if I have met him before. He says sure. He tells me he drives a motorcycle. I've probably ridden on the back of it. Helmets.
I think maybe I met him at one of the University parties. No. He tells me. I have a son and I'd rather stay home with him than go to the parties. Anyways, I don't have habits like that, to drink and smoke. He says if I want to go to the beach sometime that's better.
I think he's being honest. I don't think he's hitting on me.
He's just talking. And being nice.
I could be wrong.
It's not my place to judge.
I trust in energy.
It feels okay.
He has a nice smile when I tell him thank you and to take care.
I have a lot of time now. The Moo woke me up early.
I thought it woke me up late.
Maybe it woke me up right on time.
I sit down by the park. I have a book in my bag. Anyways, I just sit. There's enough entertainment in watching the people go by and listening to the kids playing in the park behind me. The sun feels warmer as I consciously take it in, closing my eyes and letting it feed me. It feels that way. As if its feeding me.
When I open my eyes, my friend is beside me. He's a bit older than me. A whole bit. Last time I saw him he rode by my house on a horse. The time before that he was doing yard work around the house I used to live at. Always a smile. Always a hello. Never a not.
I've always had a bit of a thing for him. I think it's his dedication. The integrity with which he lives and works and talks and acts. His awareness and commitment; his hard-working nature, yet the lightheartedness with which he takes the things he does. Life is not all about work. You need to make time for the things you love. You don't know when you're time will be up. You need to live, now.
I don't know how it happens but we're sharing adventures. We're talking with our hands and we're wrapped up in each others eyes. He is alone and hitchhiking to the Caribbean coast. He just has a backpack. He is young again and he doesn't tell his mother where he is going. He doesn't have a cell phone. He arrives at the beach and lives there for 2 months. He buries his backpack in the sand when he goes out because they will steal it. His friends are the poachers and the beach roamers. They are the men who drink and the women who stay home. He may have eaten some eggs in his time there, too. He says with heavy heart, in honesty, he was hungry. It's not right, but hey.
They were good people, you know? The poachers. Well, maybe not good, but they treated me nice, you know? If I didn't have anything to eat a black fisherman give me some fish. A beach man would climb a coco tree and give me coconuts. Even sometimes, rice! The neighbours would give me some rice as I walked by. We were all poor you know? I had nothing but it was nice. Que vacilon.
Then he's down in the south pacific. He goes to work on the African palm oil plantations. He's too young, though, and they won't give him work. Anyways, he plays games on the zip lines that carry the fruits to the trucks. They get mad. It's not what he came for. He doesn't last there long. He has no money to leave so his friend and him walk almost 100 km.
He nods his head, leaving my gaze and looking out into the distance. It looks like he's looking across the street nearby, but I think he's looking down a 100 km road.
I didn't learn a lot of education from schools. I just learned stuff on the streets and on the beach and from people. And I learned to respect people. And I learned to respect food.
I respect food. Some people don't, you know? I respect food. I respect food.
He repeats this line and he looks at me again. This time with quite a serious conviction in his eyes.
His words sink into me and find their place alongside my own. My own words are the same, in a different language; but the same- I respect food.
I know it's not the time for me to say it. It's not the time for my story. I trust in energy.
I don't need to say anything to know that he does, too.
Suddenly, a car pulls up for him and we're both smiling and in the middle of a conversation about education and he jumps, grabs me and hugs me and says that it was "demasiada buena la conversacion para el" in a tone that resonates through my head the rest of the day. And we never finished that conversation; it felt like a movie that we were just in the middle of...
It was just too good of a conversation for me.
Did he say that?
Or did I?
And he leaves in the car. And then my phone rings; its 8:15am and I answer. And the day begins.
A lifetime after the cow moo'd.
